insidethecrack

[insidethecrack]

The Reality Aquarium

Dear People, let’s do analogy ! Because in the schizophrenic world, analogies are things we do. So today, I’m holding your hand through this particular journey which I called the Reality Aquarium. Feel free to escape the analogy at any time you want, or to just read it as a cool story. The point is not to make you uncomfortable. I’ve been working on this analogy for years now, so I think it’s pretty complete and safe (but you’ll never know how people feel). In fact, it’s the first one I used to try to explain to friends what schizophrenia was all about. 

(also I’ll keep doing the gif thing because it brings colors and don’t we all need colors ? Today : fish)

Imagine you have an aquarium around you. The aquarium can be the size you want, just your head, maybe your whole body. The aquarium fits you perfectly. Also, this aquarium might come from the future because the glass is able to follow your every moves without you being annoyed by it. In fact, most of the time, you don’t realise it’s here. You don’t see or feel it. 

On one side of the aquarium, there’s the reality, the objective reality from the outside world, and on the other side, there’s your reality, your dreams, your belief, desires, your feelings. For our journey, it doesn’t matter what side you pick for your reality and the world’s reality (although it says a lot about how you consider the relation between the individual and the society, but that’s our subject today :) so feel free to put your reality and the world’s reality on the side you feel the most comfortable with). 

Most of the time, you don’t see the aquarium glass. But if you want, you can. You just have to focus your eyes, as you would do with a camera. With the right setting, you can see the glass, and you can clearly see both side of it. In fact, sometimes, you even have to do this, because the glass gets dirty. The glass sometimes gets darker and it can be hard to see through it. Maybe you’re sad, so tears are blurring the vision. Maybe something at work is too complicated and the glass is stained. Maybe you just had a fight with someone you love about a very important and complicated issue, your feelings are hurt and your worldview might suddently not look so solid and objective, so the aquarium is all muddy. Sometimes, shit happens, and the aquarium gets extremely muddy, so muddy you have mud in your eyes and your mouth and it’s hard to see anything but the mud and hard to breathe. So the cleaning might take longer... 

Everyone has their muddy day, or month, or years. It’s an everyday job to take care of an aquarium. A job we tend to forget because we can’t see the aquarium unless something wrong happens to it. But most of the time, you’re able to tell which side is wich. Which one is objective shared reality, which one is personnal fantasy. 

The thing is, my aquarium is cracked.

So now, imagine what it would be like if your aquarium was cracked like mine. 

The things from the objective shared reality will be mixed with your own personal reality.  You can’t tell apart your feelings from the outside items. 

Reality will hit you like a fuckton of brick anytime. You have nothing to keep it at bay, because you can never be sure if it’s yours or outside’s.  Friends don’t answer right away to your text ? Take it personnaly. Teachers make some criticism (even good one) ? Take it personnaly. Rape might no longer be a crime in your country ? Take it personnaly. Cops in the university ? Take it personnaly. People wearing shorts ? Take it personnaly.  Movie everyone likes but you ? Take it personnaly. Everything can be a threat. Everything must be estimated to be treated because you don’t know which one is which. 

Your feelings won’t be yours. Because are you sure they’re from the right side of the aquarium ?  Are you sure you’re angry ? Think again Sad ? Think again In love ? Think again Happy ? Think again Confused ? Think again Confused about being confused about having to think of all this ? Think again. How could you tell apart your feelings so easily when you can’t be sure they’re yours ? 

To feel inside a cracked aquarium means feel a 100% and in the same time not feeling at all. The feeling will be there, but it will require time for you to recognize and acknowledge it for what it is. In the meantime, the reality and feelings will keep mixing up.  Are you angry because people are wearing short or because rape will no longer be a crime in your country ? Are you sad because everyone but you likes a movie or because there are cops in the university ? Are you confused about the teacher’s critisms ? Or happy your friend didn’t answer ? Or does it make you afraid ? In the cracked aquarium, it’s not that easy to tell. 

And the crack is growing up. 

As the crack is growing up bigger chunks of reality can hit you, and bigger monsters can mix up it. Which one is making the crack growing up ? 

As the crack is growing up, it’s getting harder and harder to deal with the most simple facts. Time is one of the first thing you’ll lose. When is when ? This is such an abstract concept to get... and with a cracked aquarium, it will ask too much energy to keep it. 

As the crack is growing up, the feelings you couldn’t properly acknowledge are getting out of control. Feelings want to be felt, they want to be acknowledged. So they’ll grow bigger. They’ll scream. Louder. Always louder. They’ll turn into monsters so you have no choice but acknowledge them. 

And reality and non-reality will keep being mixed. And it will get harder and harder to tell them apart. 

As the crack is growing up, the monsters will get bigger, which make it harder to keep up with reality. Working gets harder. Conversation gets harder. Why the person you’re talking to can’t hear this terrible craking noise ? It’s so loud, it’s just impossible they don’t hear it. The cracking sound takes more and more space. You hear all the time and everywhere but no one else seems to notice. Why ?

Why don’t they hear the cracking sound ? Your aquarium is cracking over and over. You can definitely see the aquarium now, because there are so many cracks now, they’re everywhere. So many cracks you cannot not see them. So why can’t they see the cracks ? Why can’t they hear them ?

Because most of the time, they don’t even see their own aquarium, so how could they possibly see yours ?

And the cracks go on until...

until your aquarium breaks.

There were so many cracks that your aquarium turned too fragile to resist any attack, whether it came from the objective reality or yours. Attack ? There were no need anymore for an attack... it was too fragile now. A simple touch was enough to break it down. 

When the aquarium breaks, it’s the most painful experience you’ve ever had. The cracking aquarium exploded right on your face. Instead of protecting you, the aquarium turned into poison. The shattered glass cuts your skin in many places, living your bleeding and naked without any aquarium to protect you from the World. You’re breathing and eating mud from the remains of the aquarium. Worst. You’re breathing and eating the shattered pieces of the glass. You have shattered glass INSIDE your whole body. 

It burns. It’s cutting everything from inside. And the world is still moving. Time is still passing by. Conversations are still happening. Monsters are invading the world. But you’re not a part of this anymore. With no aquarium to keep you safe, you lost any kind of connection to the rest of the human beings. 

You’re left alone, in pain, bleeding on the outside the loss of the aquarium, bleeding on the inside the poison of the aquarium. 

And when you think the pain is going to kill, that when all the cracks of the world find a way to gather themselves... and so a new aquarium is created from the ashes of the previous ones. Shattered glass is gathered from everywhere aroun you and... inside you. Tearing you apart one more time before the torture ends. You’ll need hours, maybe days, to recover from this. 

And you can’t tell, you can’t explain. Because most people doesn’t even know they live in an aquarium. They don’t see it. So how could they understand the whole process or cracking-breaking-exploding-tearing apart-gathering-starting over ?

You’re alone in your aquarium. Knowing that even when you’re back to the safety of the aquarium, you cannot fully connect to the other aquariums.  You’re deeply alone, and the only thought that apease you at that moment, it that at least, you’re back inside a suitable aquarium. 

For now. It’s still a cracked aquarium...

Personnaly, my biggest fear is that one day, I won’t be able to gather the shattered pieces anymore and I’ll end up wandering in the world outside the aquarium. It’s scary. Watching the cracks growing up is one of the most terrifying things I have to live, because I know what it leads to. When the cracks are growing, I know pain is coming.

I hope you enjoyed this little trip of ours. Take care of your own aquarium please. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there and doesn’t need your care... Also, remember, not everyone has the same kind of aquarium, which means we all hav different needs and ways to take care of it. You can help people of their aquarium, but you can’t decide for them. Because you can’t see their aquarium and you don’t know what it’s like to inside of it. 

Take care of your aquarum.

Sending love. 

PS : in case you were wondering which side of the aquarium I chose for shared reality and mine... to me, both are on the both sides. Remember : cracked aquarium here. But to end on a more positive note, it can also be a good thing. It means I have the ability to switch from one view to another. I can look at the reality with the lenses of a subjective reality, and the other way around. I can understand the individual through the prism of society, and the society through the prism of an individual. Lately, I came to understand that it can be a strength... it’s not such a common ability. Hugely people have one of these two views and have to produce an effort to access the other. I can easily switch from one to the other... so I guess it’s not all dark, even though it’s often very hard. 

[insidethecrack]

Diagnosis : curse or blessing ?

[did I already tell you how much this show is absolutely terribly awesomely great ? no ? what am I doing ! :o]

“A real diagnosis will help you feel less alone” “Don’t put a label on you” “You don’t look like you’re [insert diagnosis, generally works fine for autism and schizophrenia]” “If you don’t get a proper diagnosis you can’t get proper help”

etc etc

Whether people are pro or anti diagnosis, they all have their words to say... in our faces generaly. Because, you know, mentally ill, you can’t have a proper opinion about this, fortunately, lovely people are always ready to tell you what’s good for you ! Aren’t you happy ? 

If this introduction sounds bitter, it’s because I am. The matter of diagnosis and medication may be the two discussions where neurodiverse people are the most silenced, even if we are the people directly concerned by it. So I want to discuss it, for real, even if it’s complicated and we might have very diverse opinions. Please remember : I do not pretend, in any way, that I hold the truth. This article is nothing but food for thoughts. Food I have chewed for years now (it’s in the pipes of this blog since its creation), this is my opinion now, maybe it will change again. So feel free to disagree. I know how difficult this kind of subject can be... no truth, just food for thought. 

In the logic of the Schizophrenic Linguistic, I’ve been thinking about the power of words A LOT. A lot of people, directly concerned or not, seem to believe that a diagnosis fixes everything. Well, as usual, reality is a bit more complicated than that. [also, since it’s a complicated topic, I decided that this post will be covered Simone Simons headbanging gif, no reason, just that it’s a light for me and this article needs some light]

Naming is power

If you can name a thing, you have a chance to control it, or at least, to understand it. A lot of neurodiverse people, whatever their diagnosis, whatever their story, will tell you this: once they had a (proper) diagnosis, a lot of things had started to make sense. There was a reason for what was happening to them, and they were not the reason. It may sound obvisous, but sometimes you got to tell the obvious: if you can explain a thing, you can have a grip on it. You can modify it. Not because it’s easy (it’s not), but a diagnosis, a word, will help you now where to start. Things that were isolated are now the pieces of a puzzle. These pieces have borders. There is a picture on each of them. And you can find a way to put them together. 

What is less obvious is that the diagnosis is NOT the picture you have to create. The diagnosis is a tool to create it, to understand it. And it’s fucking important to understant that : it is just a tool. 

Why is it important ? Because psychiatry is a scam (sorry, had to get that out of my system, now back to something constructive) the lines of the diagnosis change all the time. Some diagnosis have seen their definition widened (bipolar disorder for example), other restricted (schizophrenia), other created a bit of nowhere since we’re still waiting for scientific proof or clear definition (ADHD), some were not full diagnosis, just symptoms, but are now considered as disorders of their own (anxiety), etc etc. You can choose to believe it’s science making progress, or you can be terrified because it doesn’t make sense how they’re playing with our mind. (also, if you’re like me, you might wonder : how is it possible that for each diagnosis they have found the same number of symptoms? and why “five at least” are required to get the diagnosis? why five, why not four or seven??)

Whether you’re defiant to psychiatry like me, or a true believer of the field, I think we can agree on this: diagnosis when it comes to mental health is not that easy. It’s all made of blurry lines and grey areas. And it makes sense: it can already be very tricky to get a diagnosis for a physical problem, so a mental health issue? Sometimes the concerned person is not able to properly explain it, or because they just have no idea what the problem is, or because they have no idea that this or this can be a problem. To this, you must add the therapist’s subjectivity. And this is not the angry anti-psychiatry me talking. It’s just that therapists are human too. The best therapist can be the worst therapist to someone else. Therapists have bias too... Autism is less diagnosed to women, not because there are less of them, but because of what we consider autism is and what a woman must be. Schizophrenia is more often diagnosed to black persons. Etc etc. They can miss something, or don’t connect the dots well. They can be great to spot depression and PTSD but totally hopeless when it comes to personality disorders. And when you add to this that a huge part of them just think a magic formula exist to cure each diagnosis, or that they think they’re some kind of Brain Wizard, sexism, or transphobia... the result can be absolutely terrible. 

Understanding, not magic

Having a proper diagnosis will give you the tool to understand parts of your life history, of yourself, but it won’t fix it. This is very very very important. I’ve seen so many people, concerned or not, getting this wrong. If there is only one thing that looks like an absolute truth in this article it’s this : THERE IS NO MAGIC FORMULA. No pills. No word. Nothing but hard work and time... (like basicaly anything which worths it in this life)

It’s important to remember it. When you’re the concerned person, and you get to look for a diagnosis, it’s probably because you’re in pain, sometimes for years. You’re in pain and you’re tired. And you’ve been for so long, you want solutions, you NEED solutions. And probably you don’t have time to wait. If a diagnosis will give you a key to better understand what you’re going through, it still won’t fix anything. You’ll still have to do the work of understanding, of changing. And this is a long, painful, and terrifying process... We would like a pill to numb the pain, a formula to whisper to any god, but it doesn’t work that way. 

To me, word is the picture of a thought at a given moment. Meaning that the word will last, but not the thought. And one day, the thought might be gone so far, that the word won’t make sense anymore. You’ll have to come up with a new word for the new thought.  Well, I think diagnosis makes no exception. It’s still a word that describes a reality at a given moment. We think it’s carved in stones, but it’s not. Diagnosis is a process. The definition of a diagnosis changes from time to time, but so do we. And what might have been true once, might not be in the future. 

Schizophrenia is not what it used to be. Shrinks say you’d better have cancer than schizophrenia. That you never heal from it. But people did, and people do (at least a third of schizophrenic people get cured !) I was told I’m sick, I’ve always refused to think so. But a schizophrenic friend thinks she is. And it’s not a matter of who’s right or wrong. She has the right word for herself, and I use the right words for me. (I think we’ll come to that special part later) I used to just say that I was psychotic. Then I said I have schizophrenia. Now I say I am schizophrenic, or neuroatypical if I’m not sure I’m in a friendly space. Each of this words are part of my journey along the diagnosis.A new one may come in the future, or not. 

Words and diagnosis can change, but you still got to do the (hard) work. Which means to try things, and sometimes fail. 

It also means that : run away from any therapist who pretend they have a magic formula (may it be meds, yoga, type of therapy, words). Run as far as you can from them. They’re dangerous... because they won’t listen to YOUR words. They won’t let you choose the right words for yourself. Because they think only one set of words exist for one condition... 

One word for so many realities

Let’s go back to a simple thing : a cold. If you’re like me, you may think a cold is a very simple (and genuine) illness. That it’s pretty easy to diagnose, in fact, so easy that probably none of us ever goes to a doctor to get a cold diagnosed. But we all be so wrong to think that a cold is the same for eveyone (but we still do). The symptoms are easy to spot : a blocked up nose, maybe a sore throat, headache, maybe a bit of fever, sometimes a pain in the eyes, like they’re swollen. The thing is... none of us live it the same way. A friend of mine, as soon as she has a 38° fever (NB : if you’re not used to the celcius system : normal body temperature is 37°C, 38 is barely a fever for an adult, but 39 and 40 are worrying, and at 41: run to the closest hospital) she can’t move and is in pain like me at 40... A cold is supposed to be short, but I had cold lasting for 4 uninterrupted months. A friend of a friend just got cancer and chemio, he’s cured and fine, but if you have a cold next to him, you might kill him. Also, do you know what has all the symptoms of a cold but is not a cold ? Allergies, the flue (and probably a few others). The only difference being the causes or the intensity. But what if you didn’t know you had allergies and they started during the cold season (meaning all your relatives and people in the subway have it) ? If you feel terribly sick with a 38° fever, how will you notice the difference of intensity between a cold and the flue ?

Even a simple cold isn’t that simple.  So now, if we transfer this logic to mental health, we will have a glimpse of the tricky part of diagnosis: it’s not that simple. As we say : the definition of diagnosis changes, the subjectivity of both patient and therapist has a role, and now we must remember that a simple word can recover so many different realities. 

In this blog, as often as I can, I try to explain how schizophrenia is for me and people who has it differently. So if you’re a regular reader, you might have an idea of this, but just for fun, let’s illustrate it even more.

Did you know that hearing voices is NOT a symptom of schizophrenia ? Many people hear voices without being schizophrenic and many schizophrenic persons do not hear voices. Both are often associated because it’s quite common in schizophrenia, but in no way it’s a rule.  Regarding the voices, some recognize them. They even name them. Some can clearly understand them, when for other it’s just a fog. Some hear only one voice for all their life, and it’s always the same, when other hear different voices at different ages. For only ONE element of ONE symptom (not being able to recognize a thought as theirs), the possibilities are almost endless. Can you imagine the number of possibilities when we add ALL the element of ALL the symptoms ?

This is why I told you to run from anyone pretending they have some magic cure: if you consider this mathematic reality, it’s impossible. This is why there are still to many things which are unknown or missunderstood: because mathematically the number of combinations is barely understandable by humans. A diagnosis is a list of GENERAL symptoms that are supposed to cover very different realities so they can fit in one unique box. 

A diagnosis CAN’T be a magic cure because the risk of error is way too big.  So remember : when you’re given a diagnosis, you have the right to ask why. Why does your therapist think this diagnosis fit you ? What does it mean ? And you have the right to disagree. Being wrong doesn’t mean your therapist is a horrible person wanting to hurt, maybe they just didn’t consider a key element as key, maybe there is something you didn’t tell because you didn’t think it was relevant, or maybe there was a bia. If your therapist is a good one, they’d be willing to discuss it with you. Because, once again, a diagnosis being a tool, you’ll need to understand how the tool works, and they have to make sure they give you the right tool. Once again, if they refuse to discuss the whys with you : run. 

Loneliness and stigma

Diagnosis can also be a double-edged sword. 

On one side, having a word means you’re not alone. They don’t create word for just one person. Having a diagnosis means having the right tool, it also means you’re going to be able to look for people with the same diagnosis. You’ll be able to share experiences, to exchange tricks, to be heard without having to over explain yourself. Knowing that you’re not alone can be such a relief ! No, you’re not a monster, you’re not the problem. You even have peers that can understand you ! 

I think I don’t need to develop this point much more right ? :) We’re humans, none of us like feeling lonely and forsaken...

But on the other side... it comes with a price. Stigma around mental health is clearly no joke. For some diagnosis, the stigma is so strong that we have to live in the closet. We have to do some kind of coming out to our relatives (I call it “a psyching out”, because English is so easy to neologise with). 

Schizophrenics are psycho killer. Bordeline Personality Disorder people too. And so are Multiple Personnality Disorder. 

For us, it’s sometimes better not to tell because we really take the risk to lose everything. 

But even if it doesn’t get to that point, other diagnosis come with their share of stigma too. We hear of those diagnosis so often that we think we know what they are. Spoiler alert : we don’t, for most of us. 

Depression, PTSD, autism, bipolar disorder, ADHD, anxiety, suicidal, eating disorders etc... we hear those words so often we think we know when we don’t. We know the exageration, the stupid things media say without checking. We know from a distance. We use the wrong words, we do poor choice of words, we have the wrong reaction. And people with these diagnosis suffer from this ignorance, they have to deal with it daily, coming from their loved ones sometimes, which make their life even harder. 

Also, being diagnosed is being labelled... and that part is hard. How not to get stuck in your diagnosis ? How can you do to keep it a part of yourself but not let it becoming your whole self, especially since for some of us it had a huge impact on the construction of said self ? Those are already tricky question to ask oneself. But telling your relatives about your diagnosis means you’re also inviting them to the labelling party... and you won’t be able to control how they will label you ! Will they just listen to what they think they know because they saw this TV show or read one article ? Or will they do some research on their own to understand what you’re going through and know how to support you ? Will they run away from you ? Will they bring everything to your diagnosis ? Will they stop inviting you not to “tire you too much” in a “hell in paved with good intentions” way ? Will they ask you directly so they know what to do and what not to do ? Will they avoid the subject and act like nothing changed ? Did something change anyway ? Will they tease you about it ? If so, will they bother asking for your permission or not ? Will they tell you what you should do and what your should not do after they’ve heard of the wonders of yoga and gluten-free food ? Do this list ever end ? (no)(at least that last one was easily answered)

Whatever diagnosis, wherever we are on our journey with it, we ask ourselves all these questions all the time. 

Bonus question : what’s easier, telling them the diagnosis, or explaining what it means ? Saying “I’m schizophrenic” is quicker and less overwhelming (the irony of this sentence...), but if I’m not sure the person I talk with is aware enough, this might not be the right strategy. They won’t know what it really means, either because their head is full with psycho killer bullshit, or just because they genuinely don’t know (hence the birth of this blog). So it might be better to explain a bit “I hear voices and have recurrent hallucinations which I can tell apart most of the time. In general, I have to live with a broken sense of reality”. But this solution might sound terrifying because it opens too many doors and these doors all lead to an unknown world (and I don’t even blame them to be scared. I mean... I live in this said unknown world. It IS scary...). And there’s not really a third way. 

So a diagnosis helps you feel less alone, until the moment it makes you feel even more alone than before. 

Responsability and power

I know I may sound pessimistic, so I want to emphasize this, even though I already mentioned it : a diagnosis gives you power. Knowledge is power. Naming things is power. It’s no longer an unknown thing eating your brain. It’s a thing you can name and learn to understand. There is no much more to say, but it is so important I will repeat it over again : IT GIVES YOU THE POWER TO UNDERSTAND AND GET TO KNOW YOURSELF. It’s not going to fix you, because you’re not broken. You’re hurt. You’re different. You may be not functionning well at the moment. But no psychiatrist was stupid enough to create “broken” as en entry in the DSM, and I think it says something.Even if some of them talk about “broken brain”, they still haven’t turned it into a full diagnosis, and even though, you’re not your brain, it’s just a part of you. 

It gives you power. The power to define yourself. The power to choose the words that work for you. And you can change these words as you’re working your journey ! 

Use the words, don’t let them use you. 

Also, and this might be a bit more polemic so I hope I’ll succeed in phrasing it well, don’t let them, or yourself, tell shit like “it’s not you it’s the disease”. I know sometimes our brain makes us do to stupid shits. But sentences like that, they directly open the gates to hell... They take away the responsability of your action from you. Thing is, if you’re not responsible for your actions, in the long run, someone will have to be. I’ve been there, in this place where all responsability is taken away from you because “it’s not your, it’s the disease” and believe me, you don’t want to go there. It’s hell, it’s the worst that have ever happened to me, and i’ve spent nights seeing my own body being torn apart so I could see my own head rolling on the kitchen floor... It’s always for your own good, it’s always to protect your. People who say this are very well intentioned, whether they’re therapists or your relatives. But at the end of the road : you don’t get to decide what you feel, what you think, what you want. Anytime you’ll express a slightly strong emotion “it’s not you, it’s the disease”. Which means that if they did you wrong ? Well, you’re not really angry, it’s the disease, so they don’t really have to question themselves. You’re sad ? Well, not really, it’s the disease. Take this pill / do some yoga, you’ll be better. You’re happy ? Well that’s suspicious, might be the disease talking, are you SURE you’re really happy ? You’re afraid ? Well the disease makes you afraid of everything so why bother ? Anytime you’ll try to express what you think about who you are... well the disease makes you unable to form a proper thought or to clearly see the world around you, so your opinions are biaised and we won’t listen to them. And when it comes to what you want to do regarding your own life... well, with your disease it’s not possible to do so and so. They won’t let you think about what you can or can do. They will decide what are your limits. For you. Without asking. 

Don’t let you trapped in the “it’s not it’s disease” road. Sure, it sounds easy and tempting, and we all want to do this once because it is so so hard. I write all this shit (with which you can always disagree, remember), but let me tell you a secret : there are still so many moments when I just think “when don’t I just give and let myself turn completely crazy so I will not have to take responsability for anything”. Maybe this too shall pass, maybe it won’t. It happens to the best of us. It’s normal, and it’s ok. But if we give up to this... we might never come back. We will lose so much.. we will lose our feelings, our right to think and disagree, and even our power over our own life. Everything comes with a price... if we give up the responsability of our life because it was too hard... we’ll give ourselves up to them. A them that might not be very comprehensive or well-intentioned... 

I often want to give up to the madness just so I can be declared not responsible of my action anymore, which means I won’t have to decide, won’t have to fight anymore. But schizophrenia is a well-crafted defense system (schizophrenia is an artist, a weird gloomy scary artist, but still), and anytime I have these thoughts, it brings back some conversation with the therapists from these days :

“I want to stop going to the temp hospital... I hate it here. I hate being there. I hate the people there. It scares me, I don’t want to me one of them. _But it makes you feel good ! What about going twice a week instead of only once ?”

“I forget my meds the other day and I had troubles falling asleep. Are the drugs breaking my sleeping system ? Does it mean I will never be able to sleep without pills ? What will happen when I stop taking the drugs for good ? _You must not forget your pill !”

“I’m jealous. They live with my friend, and when she’s on the phone with me they still talk to her, they’re stealing my time with her, it’s not fair.. they get to live with her and I can only call once in a while when I have no friend here. It’s not fair and I’m jealous of them. _This is not what you feel.”

And I remember what it truely means to let them tell you “it’s the disease”. Don’t fall in the trap. 

Don’t trap your relatives in this hell. Let them chose how they define themselves. How they name themselves. Stop the injonctions and listen to them, even if you disagree (I’m very anti-drugs, but I will never force my beliefs on friends who chose to be on drugs. We’ll discuss it if they want, but I’ll respect their choice anyway. And If I can do this, I have no worry, you can too. Because you truely have no idea how anti-drugs I can be...). It also means that if they don’t want to get a diagnosis, they can. Some people need a word to fight. Others will rather tackle each symptoms on their own. With all the stigma, a diagnosis can be ultra scary and for some people, it’s a real handicap in their quest for well-being. You have to respect that. If they want a diagnosis, hold their hand in the process. If they don’t, well, still hold their hands because they still have issues to fix ! :o 

Ask your therapist why this diagnosis. Make your own research. Search for other people like you. Search for their stories. Disagree with your given diagnosis if needed. Get to know yourself. 

I hope life will give you the time to do this diagnosis-travel on your own terms. Whatever way you choose, I wish you the best. May you find the tools that work the best for you. 

I hope you found this article interesting (or even helping :o). 

I want to try to write here more regularly, like maybe once a month... so if you have any question or topic you wanna see discussed here, let me know ! I’m looking for way to communicate with you (so you can submit question or topics more easily), but FB is worse and worse for this kind of this and I’m regularly forced to avoid it because it triggers my paranoia... a discord maybe ? Any ideas ?

Also, I have a little ask... I’m back to precarity shit and all the money anxiety it brings with it. So maybe, if you like this blog and you can, maybe you can buy me a coffee ? Or just share the articles you like. And if you can’t, it’s ok, I still with you the best of way on your own quest for well-being <3 

[insidethecrack]

A to Z

Eths - Amaterasu

How was it supposed to being ? How to stop.... Crash Bones echo and the world gets blurry. No logic no memory. Only blind. 

Why do you cry I asked. She didn’t answer.

Walls locked her in and she didn’t answer. Only unending tears in the middle of the hugeness of the stones. World as a still solid. 

Back in the day I knew the words. This day when it was night and we were walking and I knew the words. Everything was jostling around so much. You see one mouth is not enough for me and all these words, one tongue is not enough. But we were walking in this other nightly day and the words were crashing themselves into my skull. The words were looking for a way in, every letters pushing on the bones and crash crash crash the night had no end. 

What’s happening she asked. Shut up we said. Why do you cry I asked.

Unburried crash calcified words.

The letters got mixed up under our feet. We kept on walking regularly politely following the dotted line. Always at night the words crash themselves on me and look for my mouth. You see, the words in my head aren’t mine. At night the words aren’t mine anymore. At night we walk and if we stop the words will come in and tomorrow will never be. Tomorrow already is not anymore. 

Je suis fatigué.

So the words crash even more even stronger even deeper. The words always enter deeper inside the mucous membrane my teeth move away space move and leave the place free for the dommed syllables. The words aren’t mine et my mouth is filled with them. Always walk the same path, along the dote line. Perfect prosody. My syntax is only as good as my body and the words always penetrate deepder. My tongue already gave up. 

Why do you cry ? It’s your fault.  Pardon. Laisse moi m’en aller.  Why have you never learned the fire languages ? Your tar language always breaks and melts even more. Nothing more. No more yours. Without the fire languages you have nothing more to say but spitting this mashed fog you use as a tongue. The words are gone. The words left you abandonned you. The words never said anything. The words crash crach crash and you can’t stop now you have to walk forever on the dotted lines which cut your feet.  The words were never able to do anything. They never stopped the crash around. When you walk in the daily nights you can see all the words wandering crashing on the floor you can feel them rooting in your skin and looking for your mouth because your tongue and everything else belong to them since forever. 

Laisse moi m’en aller. 

I is tired. I is no longer for a long time now. For all this time we’re walking there is no more I. You’d think there never were an I. I is stuck in the walls, too busy crying to answer the questions. I can’t answer because I has never learned how to speak. And every night the words crash on the wall scratch the prison turn the memories into snow. And you, you’re watching, your throat burnt by the fire languages an all these words which aren’t yours.

Sorry.

But I wish they’d murder her. With you. May her be thrown on the bed and may the words  stab through her fucking face from A to Z once for all. May your tongue be turned into nothing under the weight of all the words they forced you to swallow. May your legs be broken and may you never run away again since it led us nowhere. May she die and you too. Maye the fires destroy what was left of the room. May the walls collapse and swallow us.

Je suis fatigué. Laisse moi m’en aller. 

Everything is about to perish. Sorry. I tried, I swear. Mais now everything is about to perish and not possible no running. My tard tongue sinks. Too slow. Melted. Crash. Let me go. 

The words are dead. I is dead.  And us with her. 

Laisse moi m’en aller. 

[insidethecrack]

The Schizophrenic Linguistics : Squirrel

It’s the first time that I’m going to put all of this in words (and pictures). I don’t know if I must call this a “theory” or just “fucking random magic”. Today, I invite you to dive into one of my passions : linguistic. It’s one of the best science of the world, it’s the study of languages. And for a strange reason, linguistic was an important key of my life. Discovering the world of linguistic during my master’s degree litterally changed my life. It enabled me to do great progress in my social life, and above all, to improvie my understanding of how my mind works.

Today, I’m going to try to explain to you what connections my brain did... 

First of all, you may need the basics of linguistic. Let’s go back to the very beginning and ask Ferdinand de Saussure what is a language. “A language is a system of signs, a sign being the association of a mental image and a sound image.” It means that when I tell you the world “squirrel”, your mind can produce this kind of image :

The best part is that you don’t have to think. You will hear or read the word “squirrel” and your mind will propose you the right picture. Isn’t it fabulous ? I think it is. (but maybe it’s because squirrels are fabulous)(did I tell you that all these texts were collected in an anthology among others called “A squirrel on the driveway” ? didn’t pick that example randomly :D)

But squirrel is an easy word. If I say squirrel, we will all picture the same thing... more or less. A cute little animal eatings nuts, jumping from tree to tree, hidding during winter. The thing is, we won’t all picture the exact same squirrel. Maybe because some of us have never seen any real squirrels, or because we don’t live in the same part of the world and squirrels aren’t the same everywhere, or because we had a pet squirrel, or because our favorite animation character was a squirrel, etc. So, for a single simple word like “squirrel” we might end up with as many squirrels as people imagining them. (I know, that would be fucking awesome right ?) Lucky us, not picturing the same squirrel is not really an issue. It’s “just” a squirrel. (quotation marks are because squirrels are important !)

But what is going to happen if we’re not just talking about squirrels ? What if we’re talking about more abstract concepts ? Such as... love ? respect ? tolerance ? teaching ? schizophrenia ? helping ? good music ? beauty ? violence ?

Spoiler alert : the same thing is going to happen, we will have as many definition of love as squirrels as person imagining them. Same for respect and violence and good music and helping and beauty and etc. 

BUT even though we’re all picturing different squirrels, we all use the same word. That’s right, we all use the same word even though it has a different meaning to each of us. Anyway, we still have to use the same unique word to represent something tht might be very different from a person to another.

I remember the fight with Z., my very last roommate. She told me “respect is important”. According to her, I didn’t respect her because I use word like “fuck” “shit” (and the angrier I am, the more I use them). According to me, she didn’t respect me because she didn’t respect my boundaries. For her, respect was a matter of good speech, appearance. For me, it’s a matter of allowing everyone to live their life safely. It’s not a matter to say which one of us is right, because in a way, we both were. What you must remember is that to live together, you must agree on the meaning of a word. What squirrel will we agree to consider as THE Squirrel of reference ?

In a society that speaks a language, words are connoted. We fill the words with things that are beyond the word itself. For a lot of you, a squirrel is just a word/animal you know and that’s it. For some others, it’s your little companion every morning when you leave for work. For others, it’s a nuisance, just like rats, but in trees. For me, it’s the perfect metaphor for this article. Also my fetish animal (like squirrels, I forget where I hide my things). This is far more than just the word squirrel and the mental image of a squirrel. We filled the word. And once again, let me remind you : this is JUST the word squirrel. 

Let’s try something more complicated, let’s try love. In our occidental society, the image we have of love is pretty much paved. We all saw romantic comedy. We know the trick. We all read this article about how couples should fight, but not to much, but still. Or how jealousy is a proof of love (disclaimer : it’s not a matter of agreeing or not, we’re just discussing what society associates with the word love). We don’t even think about it... unless we fall in love with someone who don’t imagine love the same way as us. For example, when a friend with a very high sex-drive fell in love with a demisexual person, it was very hard. Especially since the other considered that a couple had to be exclusive, which was not the case for my friend. Lately, on twitter, I saw a lot of things about how cheating the other was unbearable and it makes me feel so weird that everyone is just ok with this rule like it’s gravity and not even try to consider other options. Not because they must do otherwise, but just because we live in a world which values monogamous heterosexual relationship. So we have this whole cheating = not loving, when in reality, it’s more complicated.

But here we are, filling the words with way more than what they were supposed to say. It’s not completely a bad thing. How tiring would that be if anytime we talk we have to define every single word. It would kill the first purpose of language right ? Right. 

And this is where the difference between neurotypical and neurodiverse appears. And this is where I stepped aside from what I read and start creating my own hypothesis. So please, don’t take this as an absolute truth, just as an observation I’m making which might be completely biaised.

For what I observed, neurotypical people fill the words without realising they’re doing it. They’re using the social meaning of words with no problem. For a neurotypical person, the mental image and the sound image are like that : 

The mental image and the sound image are intertwined together very tightly. So tightly that one can’t go without the other. So tightly that they can’t see what is between their two hands : the social connotation, theirs. 

But for neurodiverse person, and especially for schizophrenics, it looks more like this :

The connection between the mental image and the sound image is more fluctuant. It’s almost as if we had to build a bridge for each association. Which means we are way stricter about what a word says. A squirrel is a squirrel and love is love. If I picked a squirrel, even if it’s just for a metaphor (and an excuse for cute pictures), you can be sure it was not an innocent choice. If I choose a word, you can be sure I wanted THIS word. Which makes things easier. When I was talking with Z., she was confusing respect and politness, which are two very different things, they can go along, and they often do, but they still are very different things and you can have one without the other. If you understand that, talking with me will be really easy.

Except that I’m unable to understand all the social connotations. Well, I can, but not naturally, I have to learn them. It’s like when you’re learning a new language. You have what the textbook says, and you have what real people in the real word say. If you tried to learn a foreign language and speak with foreign people, you probably already got that feeling : your grammar is perfect, but you’re missing something. Well, schizophrenics have that feeling. All the time. Even in their first language. 

I’m a stranger in my own language. 

I’m convinced this is a very sweet torture coming right from hell. 

So, to sum up,  Neurotypical people have access to the social filling of words and naturally understand it BUT are not conscious of this social filling. Neurodiverse people are concious of this social filling and can spot the missunderstandings it causes BUT don’t have a natural access to it. It means neurotypical will fill the words, won’t realise they’re doing so BUT will expect you to understand his underlying meaning. While neurodiverse will miss this social filling, and therefore, not always properly understand what’s going and can occasionnaly “missbehave” because they won’t follow a code... they don’t even know is here. 

To speak in a more concrete way, and make you understand how common it is in our everyday life. Example 1 : ex-boyfriend lives on the other side of France. (well, at this moment we’re together, not ex, obviously) After living together during a whole year we’re experiencing long distance relationship. So one day, he asked me how I feel

me : I’m sad you’re so far away. him : well it’s not my fault.

What the social filling says in this case : you’re the one who went away, which means that’s why we are appart, so it’s your fault I’m sad. What I was saying : I’m sad because you’re so far away. To me, it wasn’t a matter of who’s fault it was. It didn’t even occur to me that he could be “guilty” of the situation. I was sad. And it was because the situation made us far from each other. End of discussion. But he heard that I was kind of blaming him for this. 

Example 2 : a friend was an au pair in Ireland during 6 months. She traveled a lot, took a lot of pictures, and met a lot of persons. When she was back, she had a lot of stories to tell. And you know I can’t resist a story... but pictures... well... most of the time, I don’t really care. So when she asked

“Do you want to see my pictures of Ireland ?”

I politely said that I was not interested in seing pictures because to me they all look quite the same. And I hurt her. Because what she heard was that I didn’t care about her and her travel and adventures. I think she didn’t even realise she was hurt, and even less why she was hurt. The worst part is : if she had asked “can I show my pictures of Ireland ?” I would have heard that what was important was that sharing the pictures was an important thing to her. It was more about her telling me about her trip with her own ways than pleasing me with some parts of it. And I’m terribly sorry I missed that, because I was deeply interested in her telling me about her adventures, however she wanted to do it. 

Example 3 : more random situations. But did you know that when people ask you “hey, what are you going to see at the cinema tonight ?” they’re not asking you what film you’re going to see, they’re asking what film AND if they can join. Same thing, if they tell you “are you interested by this movie ?” you must hear that they’re asking if you want to join them for this movie... Did you know ? Because I didn’t. This kind of thing happens almost everyday. In a form or another. 

I have to collect all these situations, analyze them, put them in a neurotypical - neurodiverse kind of dictionnary so I can understand people and be understood, and not hurt them and not being hurt. It’s a very exhausting thing to do. I have to spot context + saying to see the connection. And sometimes... I even have to ask friends to translate because I’m fucking lost. And you have no idea how many times I turned guy down without even knowing because I hadn’t realised they were hitting on me ! (and you have no idea because... well... me neither. As I said : I’m not conscious of any part of the process !)

These difference in language between neurotypical and neurodiverse is so deep, that sometimes, it’s easier to speak with my American schizophrenic friend, even if he has no clue about French and that cultural differences can get in the way, than with French people of my cultural background... 

I cannot hear a question which is not asked. And if you ask me something, you’d better be sure you want the answer. I cannot hear anything else than the words said, and I don’t say anything more than the words I say. This makes me sounds... cold... pretentious... unsympathetic... mean... most of the time. I’m the kind of person you must learn to know because you can’t get me at the first sight. It’s not a behaviour I take, it’s just that this relation to language creates a barrier between me and society. 

I’m a stranger in my own language. And you would never know because I master my first language in the best possible ways. It’s invisible. And it’s even more invisible that it touches the way we use words, and most people have no clue how they use words. So, how would they understand that I use them differently ?

This was the first realisation linguistic offered me. You may not realise what a liberation it was. All these situations are deeply painful. Because I KNOW for a fact my grammar is perfect... so it was terribly dreadful to be missunderstood so often. It didn’t solve the problem. But at least, it gave me perspective and a sense of what was to be fixed. Well, not fixed, just how I could make it better. I developped many strategies to communicate with neurotypical. I force them to clearly say what they really want to say... I rephrase what they said, I ask multiple questions to check with them. When I have to express my own feeling, I use a lot of analogies and metaphor, I try to connect these images to stuffs they know, so they can translate it in their own internal language. And I clearly say that I can’t understand implied stuffs (not before I really know them). I’m still seen as a cold person (which is terribly hurtful, because even if I can accept to be described as dark, I don’t recognise myself in “cold” -__-), because this is a very “intellectual” approch to people, and society says you’re supposed to let things happen naturally (dear society, nature forgot me, how am I supposed to do ?) and not say outloud everything. But I’m less often hurt. And more important, I hurt others less often. 

So this was the first article about the Schizophrenic Linguistics, I hope you found this interesting. It was the basics, but linguistic taught me many more... let me know if you want to hear about it ! 

[insidethecrack]

The Middle People in the Haunted House

We’re the Middle People.  We’re no one wear no name have no shadow nothing we can call our own. 

We live in Haunted Houses Houses full of ghosts yelling and screaming and shouting

GO AWAY LEAVE US ALONE

And no one knows who they are no one knows how they died no one knows if they’re really dead

We’re the Middle People Living in the Haunted House

We hear the screaming we are the screaming We hear the ghosts screaming we are the ghosts screaming we are the ghost’s screaming

We’re the Middle People living in the Haunted House we go from a room to another talking to a ghost to another but all the ghosts do is screaming screaming at us screaming at each other screaming at the world

And we the Middle People are doomed we keep walking from a room to another from a ghost to another from the haunted house to the world to deliver the messages.

We’re no one wear no name have no shadow have nothing of our own We’re empty only full of the ghosts’ screaming only full of words from others only full with a haunted house with no memories

GO AWAY LEAVE US ALONE NO ONE COMES IN

We’re the Middle People  living in Haunted House we’re empty wear no name have no shadow nothing we can call home with just the screaming for memory identity name and purpose

We’re the Middle People living in Haunted House with the screaming ghost and no one can come in

not even us. 

Schizophrenic poetry for today I guess... Huge session with the therapist the other day, she kept one hour... we hit a nerve. so she kept me longer, rather than throwing me on the pavement becausse her phone just rang the end of the session. We spoke about the self-hatred. About how me and myself were like two persons, and I’m stuck in the middle, and they hate each other so deeply and badly you can’t leave them in one room, so I separate them to have a chance to function, and it works, for a while, but a time always comes when they fall on each other and war is raging and I’m stuck in the middle. And no one knows why so much hate, but it’s here, and since I don’t know why, I can’t fix it. I’m stuck in the middle of a reasonless war, so I can’t reason it. We talk about how I’ve always been a better interprete or mediator than a speaker. I’m a better stage director than actor. I’m better on the outside. I’m never fuly integrated. I’m an outsider dreaming to be an insider but unable to be one. I’m never on the right spot, always in the middle, always running, always on the outside. I’m that cat who doesn’t know if it wants in or out but wish there was a way to be both in the same time. Except that society thinks cat are cute when I’m just a weird nerd. I thought I found my place in the university, but even here, I’m not sure it’s true. The way I’m working is once again to be on the outside my own field, in the middle of three academic fields. I don’t know how to find peace. I’m just stuck in the middle of the raging reasonless war between the part of me that I had to break to survive, and now I feel like it was the worst decision ever since I can’t put that back together. I’m in the middle of the haunted house, I’m stuck in it, but I’m also outside, unable to come in because no one must come in. And I don’t know what’s worse. All i know, is that inside or outside, the ghosts are screaming. 

No one comes in.

As far as I can remember, they have always been screaming that. 

[insidethecrack]

Who am I ? [identity part 1]

Tell me who I’m supposed to be Make me better I can’t stay half way dead forever I fear now There’s not much left of me When you’ll take the sick away Who am I supposed so to be ?

Icon for Hire - Supposed to be

If you’re neurodiverse, you might have heard this more than once : “you’re not your [insert mental illness of your choice here]”. And you might have wanted to punch the person, but you didn’t because it’s something nice to say right ? So why does it fucking hurt so fucking much ? And why do people think it’s a good thing to say ?

Usually when we’re told this, it’s at time when our neurodiversity takes so much space that there is very little space for anything else. It’s very tough time, and we’re stuck in our sadness / delusion / pain / [insert your reality here]. So people are trying, sometimes very clumsily, to comfort us, and this sentence often pops up. And it makes as much sense as saying “fire burns, but you’re not the fire” to someone who just get caught in a fire. After the fire, the person has scars, it can be ugly, or very visible, and the person might live it badly. Would you tell them “you’re not your scars” ? Probably no. Because you know it’d be a useless thing to do. You’d check with the person if they want to find nice way to hide the burns, or to live with them in plain view, you would love them anyway, you would check with them how to properlys take care of the burn scars. Because the scar is a scar, and even if scars fade, they never go away. So you’d see how to help them live with it. Right ? 

Guess what, it’s the same for mental health. Because we know we are not out neurodiversity. We are way more, and we have to live with it. But it doesn’t mean it has no impact on who we are. On the countrary, it has a huge deep impact on us, on our life, and on our sense of self. 

I’m going to speak about what impact schizophrenia has on my sense of identity / self, but I think a lot of neurodiverse people might relate. 

I am not my schizophrenia, I know this. I know this so bad that when I was stuck in madness years ago, one of the thought that kept poping up was “I have to find a name for the madness, ‘cause if she has a name and it’s not mine, then we are not the same”. So... I know that. I’m not my schizophrenia but it has impact on my ability to communicate (and most of the time, not to communicate efficiently), on my ability to trust people around me, to work with them, to create relationship (we acknowledge with the therapist that schizophrenia was litteraly biaising EVERY relation I have and will have. How depressing is that ?), to meet people, to see me, to think, to sleep, to understand the world, to see and feel my body, my genre identity, my sexuality. Oh well, that covers basically any part of my life. In case you need something more concrete to understand where is schizophrenia is in my life :

-my PhD : I’m working on the interaction between language - voice - music - body. Which is perfect since I’m hearing voices who don’t speak but go through my blood and language is my only weapon against madness. So I’m way ahead neurotypical researchers. But it also means that sometimes it hits too close from home.  -academic life : you must sell yourself all the time, which is not easy when voices keep screaming and you want to delete everything you do once it’s done. You must learn to do things without being taught how to do that, which is not easy when you can’t understand an unspoken rule.  -meeting people : the way I speak = the way I think = reality. I don’t have this “moderation” stuff in my brain. Which means I can say things “coldly”. So, generally people I meet think I’m cold, unsensitive and dead inside (not really but English is lacking some incredible French words). So most of the time, I just shut up. -sex life : (because that’s one is fun....) I’m completely unable to have a representation of my body, which means I have no sex fantasy. Which mens you can’t flirt with me because I have no idea what I want or not, which means that if you try I’ll be just “euh... maybe ?” because flirting generally happens on a different moment than the sex moment so to my brain it doesn’t even make sense to answer flirting because it’s not a yes or no question because the moment will come later which means the answer might be different. 

etc etc Any neurodiverse person could do such a list (and maybe you should ask them to do so, so you could better understand what it means for them). But do you know what’s particularly funny with schizophrenia ? It’s a psychosis, but more precisely, a psychosis connected to the identity / personnality. Schizophrenia has often been confused with multiple personnality disorder because it means “broken mind”, but it’s not broken like “hey, now we’re two”, it’s broken like when there’s a crack on a glass (and here’s the tiltle of the blog ! almost two years after the beginning, now you know !). The glass still holds up, but there’s a crack in it. I don’t understand what “I” means. You may say it’s stupid, it’s a pronoun, so how could you not understand it ? On an intellectual level, I do. But on a personal level... “dafuq ?” Pronouns are used to stand instead of something else. Well, I have no idea what “I” stands for. I don’t know who is this I that keeps starting every single sentence I write or say. To me, I isn’t a pronouns, it’s something I create, and all the parts of myself are traveling inside this I. I is supposed to bring through life. I think it’s our fourst I... It’s nice, because it means I can start over and build a new one when needed. But it also means I have blood on my hand since I killed the others, someone has to do it. So my relation to myself can be quite violent... I is a thing I fix and break and fix again and break again... It’s like... if life was a video game and we’re playing the “identity level”, I would be playing in hardore difficulty. Because there are thoughts in my head that are not mine, the same head that I’ve watched rolling over the kitchen flour for hours once. I can’t stand a mirror because I dont know who it is. Photography can be hard for that too. I’m overcontroling anything I say or do, just to be sure I did it. Basically, on a daily basis, I feel like I’m living with a stranger. Except that this stranger is me, my body, and mind. I’m a clandestine passenger in my own life, body, mind.  So I am not my schizophrenia, but my schizophrenia defines me, at least partly. Just like I’m not my parents, but the choices they made in my education define me. I’m not what the bullies said but baving been bullied defined me too. I’m not my ex-boyfriend but what happened with him will define a part of my future relationships (if they ever happen). I’m not my PhD advisor, but the way she guides defines a part of my PhD, which defines a part of me. So maybe we all got that wrong. Maybe it’s not a matter of whether I’m my schizophrenia or not, maybe it’s more how many things define me. The more items on the list, the more I get close to “me”. 

Identity is hell for a lot of us, neurodiverse or neurotypical, in a way or another. Because we are so much and so little in the same time. But you can’t list ALL of the items to anyone you meet, not even to yourself. So you have to chose. But how ? Does your job define you more than the delicious cookies you baked to please your friend ? Does your mental / physical illness define you more than the books you wrote ? How can you be so sure that all of these items are so independant when YOU are the connection between them ? 

According to me, it’s more a matter of choice. We chose which items are important in this life long list of things. It’s scary, choice is always scary. It implies responsability. But it also means that we can change anytime we want or need. It’s possible that one day, my schizophrenia defines me way more than days where I’ll be defined by my love for linguistic or metal music. If we can chose, it also means that you can’t tell a neurodiverse person that they are not their neurodiversity, because you have no fucking idea and it’s not yours to chose for them. Because, maybe at that moment, they feel like it’s the item which most defines that and YOU have to accept that. So if you want to say something, maybe go along the line of “you are not reduced to it” or “you are a lot of other things too”. For some of us, our neurodiversity will last all of our life. Whether we want / like it or not, it’s going to be part of our life until life is over. Therefore, it will have more impact on our identity than that one job we took during several months or even years : because it will last forever, because it has impact on every part of our lives... and also because most of people won’t get that. 

Once someone corrected me and said “no, you’re not schizophrenic, you have schizophrenia”. I think it was very well intentioned, but it was fucking violent. I use “be” because in French you can’t use “have” with schizophrenia. So it’s a habit I have. But also because “have” implies that I could not have it. It’s not a choice I have. So “be” seems truer : I am schizophrenic, and it’s ok, because I also am a writer, a translator, an interprete, a PhD student, a theatre nerd, a metalhead, an otaku, a rain walker, a friend, a sister, a non-binary person, a feminist, a teacher, a book worm, a cat human, a shitty pun maker, a homemade linguist, AND SO FUCKING ON. So i want to be able to say I AM schizophrenic because it’s true, and it will probably be forever true, so I need to be just an item on a never ending list of items I used to build this I (which may be one day the last I’ll have to create...). 

Don’t correct your friend when talk about their neurodiversity and how it defines them or impact on their life. They know better than you, it might just be hard to put it into word. Listen, understand their choice, respect it. You’ll earn a lot by doing so : the trust of your friend, but also the right to define yourself the way you want, with the items you wanted and chose. Neurodiverse persons are often refused the right to choose for themselves : their life, their will and ambition, how to treat their need, but also the way they talk about themselves and define themselves. As a neurotypical person, you may have never experienced that, so just imagine a few seconds : we meet, you start introduce yourself and then I interrupt you “no, you can’t like this thing, not with hair like that ! people with those hair don’t do that !” And everyone you’ll meet after me will react just the same until we all proved you that no, you couldn’t like this thing, not with that kind of hair. That’d be silly right ? Well, that’s what the world does to us, and not always with violent ways, more often, it’s more subtle things, like people wanting to comfort you with the wrong words.  That’s what the world does to us all the time. It silences a lof of people with anxiety and self-esteem issues. It fucks up people’s brain like me, since we already have huge issues defining ourselves, it just makes it worse because it takes us years to come up with such things, and it can be destroyed in just a second. 

If schizophrenia doesn’t define me, someone took the opportunity of a psychotic episode to rape me, how is it for defining life experience ? It broke the fragile limits I was building for years. This I was getting better and better. We had to kill it because it couldn’t survive... and now we’re starting over. And I’m left alone at night wondering : what the worst part, being schizophrenic or a rape survivor ? in my case, is it so difference ? And I’m struggling because I have no answer, I have no idea how to choose. And it doesn’t feel like there is enough place on this body to keep both. But once again, it’s not really like I have a choice. (so I get we should build this new I bigger ?? ...) 

And this, this is why at the moment, I think it should be important that people know I’m schizophrenic, because I’m going through a time of my life where it has a huge and deep impact on everything I do, feel and think. I know it hasn’t always been the case, so I have hope it won’t last forever. But for now, this is a huge part of who I am, at least until I got everything back under control. 

This is what your friend is telling you when they say they have depression / PTSD / bipolar or any other diagnosis : at the moment, this is a huge part of who I am. It may change a day, and if so, they’ll let you know. In the meantime, see what they can’t see anymore, and bring it back to their mind, see their light behind the darkness, and don’t get offended if they can’t see it themselves, it will take time. But they have to follow their own path. Remember the last time you were very very sad. Would it have helped if someone had come to you and say “you’re not your sadness !” ? Would it have comforted you in any way ? No. Probably no... you would have wanted the person to acknowledge your pain and hang out with you and hug or say silly things right ? Guess what ? We want the same thing. That should make things easier to understand right ?

I realise this article is already so fucking long and I didn’t talk about the last thing about identity and mental illness : why is it so hard to let this painful things stop defining us ? It’s already so long and I should be working (because remember, I’m also a teacher...), so next time I guess !

Take care of you, and keep listening to one another. 

[insidethecrack]

Aschenwörter

I’ve decided that since the cinema was unable to properly portray schizophrenia, I will try to photograph what it really is. I’m not a photographer, neither am I any good with any kind of picturing. So... be kind ? I guess it’s just a try. 

First try of the project “What schizophrenia really looks like ?”

Day 1 : Aschenwörter

Paranoia comes in every shapes and sizes. It’s different for everyone. For me, I sometimes get terrified because I think people can hear me thinking. I mean, there is so much noise in my head, how possibly couldn’t they hear ? Paranoia is so convinced that we’re the worst thing on Earth, that we can’t talk to our friends because they might, no, not might, they will leave. So we write. But now, we’re afraid that someone might read. So... we’re writing in German. No one near me speaks German, so even if they find that, they won’t understand. (and even if they do, I guess my German is so bad that you can’t really understand it) So far, it’s working, we can journal again. It’s not the best, because it takes us so much time and effort to say the most little thing, but I hope that in the future, it will get easier and the words will be free again, rather than dying in my throat.

Day 2 : Sometimes you lose

Some day, you just can’t. And the voices win. And they bring you down. Sometimes you’re so angry and desperate to destroy something, you destroy the first thing you find : you. I once told a friend, and lately my therapist, that it was easier to be angry at myself rather than at the world. If I’m angry against me, I have a chance to win. Even if it means that I also lose. I must say, on days like this, I don’t really care.

Day 3 : Sometimes you win

Only two days separates this picture from the one above. This is what a schizophrenic person really looks like : basically anyone. By looking at me, you can’t guess that I’m schizophrenic (whatever the voices say), neither can you see that I just won a huge battle, nor that I’ve been being tortured for two months. Self-harming habit is back, and it’s bad. Self-punching is as easy as putting schoes on. But mainly, we were not allowed to turn on the heater and to wear a coat outside. Winter began at the beginning of those two months... Finally, thanks to the rain, the voices and I talked and we came to an agreement. Finally, we can get out with our coat on. Torture is over... 

Day 4 : the White Cat

For a few months now, I think, I see a white cat. At first it was very strange and scary. I don’t have nice visual hallucinations. Visual is only monsters. The other thing is that I only ‘see” those things with my right eye, which is blind. So it was very surprising to see this little fellow at first : because he’s a well behaving visual hallucintation and he appears on my left side, not on my ride. He doesn’t do anything. He just comes. He pops up, and then vanished. He sits at my side when I’m at my desk. He walks a bit with me when I come home. He doesn’t come too close, not to touch me, but I could touch him if I just leant forward. But I know it’s not in the rule. He’s coming closer at each of his appearance. I let him come to me. I don’t know what to think or feel regarding him. I don’t know what he, as part of my delusion, means. I’m not used to nice things. Not used to nice hallucinations. I can’t stop thinking that if I start trusting him he will turn into the usual dangerous monsters with all the usual teeth and blood and eyes. But in the same time, he comes from the left side... I’m a bit lost. Should I let the white cat come closer and closer until I know what he means ? Or should I keep him distant ? It’s strange and scary. It took me years to understand the rules of my schizophrenia so I could live with it, but 2016 was such a hell, that I feel like all the rules are changing and it’s kinda terrifying. I want to hope for the best, but life made sure I wouldn’t get used to nice things... So...

Shall I follow the White Cat ?

I hope you found this new kind of article interesting, let me know ! 

[insidethecrack]

Spiralling loneliness : the art of cursed blessing and blessed curse

Don’t blame me for all the years that you were asleep [...] Last time was it a lost time ? This time you’re... Last time was a lost time This time you’re 100% fucked

Angelspit - 100%

It’s been a few sessions of therapy that we’re circling back to loneliness. It makes since I’ve experienced this feeling since the day I can breathe. To me loneliness is a burning part of life, something you can’t avoid, and barely reduce. We’re circling back a lot to it because my therapist is actually helping seeing where it comes from and why it’s going to be fucking hard to escape it. (yes, I just say a therapist is actually helping, everything happens)

Elle se dit que la la solitude c’est quelque chose d’un peu déprimant, que ça devient une habitude mais qu’on ne s’y fait jamais vraiment

Les Cowboys Fringants  (”she says loneliness is something quite depressing. It turns into some kind of habit but you never really get used to it”)

To properly explain, I need to take a step back to Chester Bennington’s death to suicide. You might not know him, he was (god this preterit is killing me...) Linkin Park singer. Linkin Park was a huge thing to the teenage me. And in a way, they still are. Even if I don’t listen much to them now, they open so many doors, their music heard me cry so much... And Chester was a huge part of all of this. (and you might have read this a lot... the world lost an amazing human being this summer...) He went through terrible shits. He had depression. His music, his voice, his lyrics, helped a lot of us surviving the worst times. He commited suicide this summer. I’m still grieving. But it took me two months to mention it to my therapist... Maybe because I didn’t want to admit how much I still care about a teenage band and how much it hurts when your hero dies and all the strange guilt around it. But still, that’s not the point today. I finally mentionned it because I was pissed at people looking for a rational reason. 

Don’t yell at me please. I know it’s human to search for reason to things that hurt, to things we can’t understand. And remember that I said nothing to these people. Everyone grieve their own way and who am I to judge ? So I let people who needed a reason looking for one. But it pissed me off, you can’t imagine how much... Because it would mean that everything has a reason. but it’s a lie. It’s a fucking lie. Especially in that kind of thing... And it feels even more like a waste of time that we will never ever know why he did it. We can guess and assume, but we will never KNOW. Maybe he killed himself because of all that happened to him that he never healed, or because of the violent critics about the last LP album which was very personal to him, or because he was drunk, or because there was no more salted butter in the house. (sorry, private joke for the French people...) Or maybe a bit of all of these. Or even something else. We will never know And this is it, more than the suicide itself, this is this uncertainty which is hard for all of us human being. The difference between me and the world is that I know this. So I don’t waste my energy on looking for answer that don’t exist. It doesn’t mean that I worth better or anything. That’s not my point. It means that this knowledge prevents me from properly grieving. People are looking for an anwser to Chester’s death, not because they want to know the right answer, but because this answer can help them better understanding, and therefore, feeling better. The way my brain works and the knowledge I have make it impossible to me. Once again, I insist : I am not better because of this. For what it worths, I even think it makes me worth less. Because here, people have a solution to feel better, even if it means using a half truth. I refuse this way to myself because half truth is no truth, therefore, it’s no answer. And Im left in pain. Unable to grieve my hero’s death. (he deserves better...)

This is a fucking long introduction, but this little story is very symptomatic of my brain. This is how I work. 

When I adressed this Chester’s suicide issue and my problems with this half-truth answer, I used mathematics analogy, which my therapist now uses to help me think (it’s the first time of my life a therapist is really making the effort of learning my language of metaphor and analogy to speak with me rather than forcing me into NT language...).

“I’m angry because they want an answer that can’t be made. They think people are fucking straight lines but it’s a lie. People are segments and segments have end. That’s fucking basic mathematics... _It’s true. It’s a very NT thing to think in terms of straight lines. They ask question, they have an answer. Straight line. Sometimes, the line even implies that they have the answer even before asking the question. _Sure, but we psychotic are more spiraling circles. So we can never walk together. I can’t walk with them. I’m trapped in a circle.”

And so by speaking about Chester’s suicide, we hit a nerve, we found something deeply hidden : loneliness. 

I told you the whole Chester’s story because this is how my brain works : it starts somewhere, then goes somewhere, then somewhere else, and else again, and again, and finally it comes back to the beginning, connecting the dots. I can’t know where I’m going before I’m there. That’s the circle. 

The other thing that makes me fucking lonely is that I’m probably too intelligent for my own good. Once again, I don’t say that it makes me better. I’m going to tell another story. Do you know the serie Scrubs ? It’s an hospital serie, a funny one you follow two best friends, a surgeon and a doctor. One day, a Super Doctor comes to the hospital. He’s a Super Doctor because he’s both a doctor and a surgeon. He’s like a fucking genius. At first everyone is happy to have him, but slowly, they hate him because he forces them to acknowledge their own limits and weakness. So they want to throw back their anger at him. But finally they understand : Super Doctor has OCD. He’s super skilled because of this : he had to work the hell out of him to surrender the OCDs, to be able to work. And he works so fucking hard that he went above all the others. Sacrifice being that he doesn’t really have a life outside work because he couldn’t do everything at the same time. 

That’s pretty much what I’m living. My brain never ever stops. My brain wants to know. Not like the end of the straight line. But really know. Even if it means it has to accept that there can’t be real answer, or not full answer. My brain never stops. Do you know why I speak English so well ? Because when I was 13, I bought Meteora by Linkin Park (circle, I told you), and there was a DVD. With no subtitles. I couldn’t understand. It pissed me off so much that I worked my ass out to learn better English since school was not enough. I spent my summer, alone in my room, working my English just because I wanted to understand that fucking DVD. Basically, today, I’m bilingual, I can write, speak, translate and teach English without having landed a single foot on an English-speaking country. And I’m probably about to do the same with German because there are a lot of books I want to read...

I’m not more intelligent because I’m some kind of natural genius. I’m more intelligent because I fucking never stop learning. I can’t stop.  When you do a PhD, people ask you what you want to do after. I have no answer. Because I’m doing a PhD to see where is my limite. How far can I go ? 

How far can I go ? I’m ready to burn myself to have an answer to this...

So what the therapist made me realise is that : if you never stop learning, then you’ll be alone sooner or later. Because people stop, they take break, they preserve their health, they don’t constantly put their vision of the world in danger just because they want to know. So if you keep going when people regurlarly stop, you end up alone. 

I’m alone because I can’t grieve Chester properly and I can’t tell other this because I know they would think I say their way of grieving is bad when all I say is it’s bad for me. So I’m alone. I’m alone because I can see myself being locked in the spiral and there is nothing I can do but wait for the end of the circle praying that I won’t lose too much this time.  I’m alone because now I know too much and even if I explain people won’t follow me that much. 

I’m alone in a circle of questions turning into a spiral because I know there is no way to fully answer them. 

The therapist says it’s a blessing and a curse. Due this constant movement of circle, instead of straight line, and to this thirst of knowledge, my mind is deeper, thicker, more complex and has a wider view on the world. But it also means I’m lonely because not much people can follow (once again, not because they’re stupid or anything, just because I don’t stop until I can’t stand anymore...). And the more the circle turns, the more I know about this. It’s a blessing, because it’s a rare quality to know so much, to develop such empathy. But it’s a curse because the price is fucking high. Two faces of the same coin. “You didn’t chose, you did your best with it” I didn’t chose, because I don’t think no one would ever chose this. What’s killing is that I’m not sure it’s worth it... all the pain and loneliness... I didn’t chose. And I wouldn’t have chosen my life if I had had a choice. How am I supposed to live with this ? Maybe there is an answer to this on a straight line, but not on my spiraling circle.

I have to be the referee of the war in my own head. One part wants to destroy us, actively, with self-harm, punishment, not turning on the heater until my body turns blue and my breats hurt, etc, or passively because it doesn’t care what happen to us anyway. The other part wants to survive whatever it takes, it wants to know and will do anything for that, learning new languages or a whole new scholar field if required. I don’t know which part I want to see win. But I still have to be the referee of a war between me and me. And I dont have time to decide. Because the circle is moving again into a spiral and I have to move. If I keep moving, I may survive. That’s all I know. The voics repeat themselves a lot. One of their moto is “marche ou crève” (”walk or die”). 

I’m alone. No one can walk with me. Because I walk in circles when people walk in straight lines. Our paths can cross, but we can’t walk together for long.

Speaking of Chester and circles, he wrote this amazing song. The lyrics are so perfect, I can’t chose a single line... Sorry, it’s not a great day / week... 

[insidethecrack]

00h08 What if ? - Paranoid Thought Process

[Something different today. Something more “poetic”. The poetic writing is a full part of this project but as it’s mainly written in French and I lack time to translate, you barely see it, just as French barely reads the more explaining parts of the project... So here is something more experimental, I hope you’ll like it anyway.]

Kati Ran – Suurin

Impact against the wall. Probably an echo, a door slammed a bit too harsly in the corridor. Sounds of footsteps. Voices. Echoes, always more echoes, bouncing on the wall. You can feel them crawling all along the wall. But it’s far way. It’s in the corridor. Far away. Well, far away, let’s be honest, the apartment is small, you can barely call this an apartment. It’s a cupboard shaped as an apartment. Cupboards are useful, you can take refuge here and hide froom the world. That’s how you ended up here. To hide. The thing with cupboards is that they’re small. So the corridor is never really far away. And this, it’s not very comforting. Because the echoes are already getting closer and the sheets are moving. 

What if

he was back, ready to tip off your leg or a rib? It wouldn’t ask too much effort. You can already feel the hand gripping your ankle, the torsion, the tension, the scission. Really, no effort at all. You’re poorly done anyway. A simple friction and you end up in blooded schreds. The echoes are spreading and they’ve already gone from under the painting to under your skin. An echo is vicious, it never showed up in the sunlight. It stays in the cover. It vibrates under the painting and if you stick too much to the wall it rips your skin in search for warmth. And if you don’t stick to the wall, he will find you. Tell me, what do we rip today ? The sheets moved, it’s high time.  

What if

it could be even worse? I think that it’s ok so far. One leg potentially sacrified and ripped skin, it’s fine. Except if you start bleeding everywhere. It always pisses off everyone. You know, it stains, it gets dry and then it becomes embedded. What do you want us to do with that afterward? You know, if we threw you in a cupboard it was because we wanted you to disappear. And the people we want to see disappear, we don’t want them to stain the walls with their blood like that. It’s not hygienic. So if you could be kind enough to keep an even lower profile than that, it would be great. Go on. Anyway, do you really think you can get yourself out like that ? Go on, lower, even lower, otherwise it’s not your leg he’ll take next time. Lower, or the echoes will come in even deeper. Skin bones blood, the usual routine. I shouldn’t even have to explain this to you. 

What if

the carnivorous plants started growing again? Maybe the sheets moved because of them. Or him. Or both. Who could tell... you can feel them right ? The stem that are extended, growing and  pulling. You can feel the light rowl of the vegetation who’s stretching.  The hunger that’s spreading between the walls. A cupboard is small. You really have to keep a lower profile than that. Leg torned out skin ripped apart and mouth devoured. The plants are always hungry. They need an infinite time to digest. That’s a piece of luck, you have all the time of the world, it shouldn’t matter to you, that they need so much time to turn you into dust. They want it so bad, you know, they are so hungry, and you, you really have to be useful to something. Anyway, it’s not like if anyone cared, right ? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be alone like that, trying to keep the lowest profil you can in the bottom of a cupboard to escape a whole bunch of predators who waited for nothing that you cloing your eyes. No, it makes no sense. If it made sense, you wouldn’t be alone like that. They told you they’d be here. 

What if

they lied ? It’s easy to say they’d be here. Easy to say they listen. All of these is easy. All of these are words. And they’re not even the good ones. So, how does loneliness stain ? Do you make the difference between the stains of blood on the walls and the stains of loneliness in your blood ? Do you think there’s one ? Because if there was one, it shouldn’t hurt like that to have blood circulating into your veins. Don’t you think ? Normally, that’s what veines are made for, to carry blood, so it shouldn’t hurt. Either your veines are poorly done, or your blood is poorly done. Pick a side. So maybe now it’s loneliness that pours into your veins. Pure, acid, liquid. Or they are lying, all of them. The neverending story, you shoul know the song. They lie, like they get what they want from you, nd then, they quit. You’re nothing but a transaction.  

What if

you simply didn’t even exist ? Because if they don’t all lie, because they can’t all be lying right, if they didn’t lie, you wouldn’t be alone like that in the middle of the night being slowly devoured by everything your bed is ready to throw up your way. It’s as simple as can be. Anyway, none of this really makes sense if we try to think about it for a moment. An since you have nothing else to do than listen to me or being devoured, we’re going to say you have a moment. None of this makes sense. You can’t be watching your own head rolling on the kitchen floor forever. You might be able to understand that, right ? So obviously, if nothing that is happening is possible, if the ones who were supposed to be there are not, obviously, it might mean you don’t exist. You’re just an illusion, a fucking lie, a story people tell themselves at night to fall asleep and feel less alone. That’s why the world turns to dust when the night is here, because when everyone’s asleep, you no longer have a reason to be, you make no more sense. Disappear. 

What if

we cut your stomach wide open, does it hurt ? Can a lie covered in skin like you feel pain ? Do you bleed your entrails if we cut you into pieces ? Do you scream if we tore pieces from you ? Do you cry ? Do you lose that much blood ? 

No?

See, in reality, you don’t exist.

Liar.

PS : My friend Art is preparing a novel with a schizophrenic character, and it fills my heart with happiness and gratefulness to see someone working their ass out to build a true relatable amazing schizophrenic character, considering that anyone should be able to relate to him, schizophrenia being just a part of the character <3 I cant express how much it deeply moves me to see stuffs like that happening. Thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart !

[insidethecrack]

A dandelion in a hurricane

This is going to be so messy... and I feel so guilty because there is already so much I promised to talk about and I always differ... and also I’m sorry if this metaphor is really not the one for the mooment regarding what’s going on but there is no better one for what I have to discuss today, please, be sure I’m not trying to surf on anything. 

A few reminders first... We already cover some piece of that but schizophrenia erases all of your boundaries : your body boundaries, your mental boundaries, your emotional boundaries. Meaning that sometimes, you don’t know where your body stops and where the world starts (whatever the world is at the moment), you can’t recognise your own thoughts from someone else’s, and you don’t know if you’re the one feeling this emotion or the person next to you (may it be a total stranger in the subway, your 30 students or your best friend / loved one). This is really tricky. 

If you want to play the smart ass in family meeting, let’s dig some psychoanalysis (don’t worry, not much, I hate it and rarely understand what’s going on, so basicaly, if you like and understand this shit, you’re like a powerful and dark wizard to me). But I once heard that Lacan said that schizophrenic people doesn’t own a “symbolic” body. (you have the right to take a break to scream “what the hell is this shit !” I’ll just wait for you, I’ve been there too) (and I had to ask a friend to explain this better to me because it seems that I poorly understood it in the first place) What’s a symbolic body you’ll ask... Imagine your body free of any symbols. Consider that language is a symbol (one of the highest system of symbols you can ever consider in human society), so you have to imagine your body outside the language. Language makes you think of your body in the addition of several parts : arm, hand, leg, blood, bones, etc. We tend to consider this is the normal way to dissect and name body parts, except it’s not. It’s a way, the way we all agree to follow. But we could have decided to consider body parts other way. Instead of “hand is the thing at the end of your arm and composed of five fingers”, we could have chosen to consider this “thing from the end of my body to my head”. This means we could have more or less body parts, in a symbolic way. The way you name, count, and limit body part is a symbol. A symbol you have internalize so deep you don’t even realise it’s here. The symbolic body is the way you think your body in terms of body parts such as defined by the society and the language you’re living in. But people like me don’t own a symbolic body, we don’t have access to this representation of ourselves. Sure, I have hands and arms and legs and bones just like you do. I have the words to name them and if you ask me to place them on a drawing I’d be totally able to do it. But when it comes to represent my own body to me... All this vanish. I don’t have boundaries between me and the outside world, but I don’t have boundaries between my body parts either. For example, my knee hurts because I feel (twice) on the bus the other day and it’s pretty dirty.  I know it’s my knee. But when I feel the pain it’s just “we hurt here, inferior part, on the right, adjust the walk”. As far as I’m concerned the place of pain prevails on the body parts, pain has limits I can feel, but what’s a knee ? Don’t know, not sure. But pain I can understand. And this is one of my biggest issue of communication with neurotypical people... During a psychotic episode, or just when I feel very bad, I’ll tell them “I hurt”, and neurotypical will ask “where ?”. I’ll just look at them, very confused, as if they had answered “I have new schoes”, a bit offended too sometimes, and answer “where is not the fucking point ! I hurt”. Today, I can tell you that my knee hurts. But tonight I’ll just say “I hurt” because there will be nothing else real about my body but the pain. Can you imagine when I have to go to the doctor for an injury ? It’d be tricky, because I try to laugh about it when I can, but when it’s a doctor with zero patience, a doctor who doesn’t know me and who’s not trying to do an effort, these visits can turn into a huge moment of psychological AND physical distress. This can spread to many parts of my life. Like sex, I’ll be totally able to tell a partner I want sex, but if they ask “what kind of sex”, I’ll turn once again into a giant human puzzle, unable to answer, and kinda freaking out. I can’t dance because of this too, learning choreograhy, even the simplest ones, is a source of anxiety. “left hand right leg ??? which one is which ? what ? where ???” My brain will desperately cut my body into the smallest body part it can imagine to try to follow... It will quickly feel like I’m falling into pieces.

So what will we do with this concept of symbolic body ? It means that to my brain, there is no such thing as “metaphor” This is why this blog is full of metaphors, or imagery. All of these helps you better understand things that can be very obscure to you. But as neurotypical, there is something you miss (like some doctors when I try to explain my pain) : it is no imagery to me, it is real, it is how I understand and feel the world. I’m not only a writer in love with metaphors. They are no metaphor to me. They are my reality, they are how I feel and understand the world. If I tell you that I am naked in a hurricane, you have to understand it this way. Picture me naked in a hurricane. (and when I write sentences like this one I think I should be more careful with all this... anyway, what’s done is done, can’t unfeel what you felt right ?) I don’t mean anything else. Nothing more, nothing less.

Let’s sum up : I don’t know where my body, mind and emotion ends and where the world starts. I have no symbolic body which prevails me from properly explaining what’s going on for me. 

A few months ago, I cried for help because my headphones were dying. It may sound like a Rich Problem, but it’s not. Believe me, you don’t want to be outside, in the world, unaware of your boundaries and fighting to maintain your own consistency. My brain will catch everything. Every person walking sitting singing running screaming being here phoning playing. My brain will know where they go with who and at what speed. My brain will know how total strangers feel sometimes better than themselves. My brain will catch the weather the wind the sun the cold and the hot air the first raindrop and the last one. My brain will smell the work on the new subway the three kebab places the two crêpe restaurants the cigarettes the weed (which I can’t handle ! throws me into psychotic episode right away) the sweat the plastic of new schoes the garbage. My skin will feel the looks my clothes the weight of my backpack the people sitting next to me behind me their warmth. And the noise... the world is so noisy... you are all so fucking noisy people... And this is just a quickly put up list. So basicaly, if I’m alone outside and I’m musicless, my brain will litteraly explose under the crazy amount of information it has to sort out. 

Because I forgot to add : these are only the EXISTING thing ! But you have to add all my monsters, when they do happen, the paranoia and how I hear people think... So my brain has to sort out all the informations from the world AND in the same time, it has to sort these informations between “exist” “doesn’t exist” “no idea” (contrary to what you may think, the problem is not when the doesn’t exist box is too full, it’s when the no idea box is too full...). Which means, my brain never stops. Never ever ever. This is why I can’t sleep, because it doesn’t stop, there are always informations, always always. And I have no symbolic body to filter them, no cleaning transition room to bleach them. They all come right in my face. All the time. In this scenario, having music when I go out is a matter ot life. Music allows me to STOP things. Music filters the world. Music recreates missing boundaries. It gives me back the feeling of time, the feeling of safety. Suddenly, I have a thing between me and the world, something on which I can hold on and build myself. This is why you have so much music in my writing, even when I write novel or theatre...

Unfortunately, music cannot fully replace a symbolic body... It’s only a crutch. And if crutches are great when you have a broken foot, it’s not so great when both of you arms are also broken and you get dizzy every step. After a hell of a year (dismissal of my PhD funding, rape, shit jobs, being gaslighted by a new roomates who prevented me to sleep, running away from my own flat to wander from friend’s sofa to friend’s guest room, working 7 days a week during months until my health just failed me, falling back to self-harm...) music was not enough. And now I’m naked in a hurricane.

All the informations of the world are hitting me in the face, relentlessly. My brain doesn’t have time to sort it out, it all just goes too fast, so it gave up and I have piles and piles and piles of untreated informations lying around in my head and my body. I can barely move. I can barely think. There is no room left for it.

When you’re stuck in a hurricane, you don’t think. You just take the first thing you can and you run for your life. It’s quite different for mental hurricane... Sure, the wind and the storm and the water is the same. The wind is ripping my skin, I can barely keep my eyes open because it’s too strong and every movement is limited. But in life, when you’re facing a hurricane, you’re just expected to survive it. No one is going to ask you to solve impossible equations, or to crack a code, or to find a cure for cancer. Survive, the rest will wait. When it comes to mental hurricane, you still have to find a way for your house to hold on, find a way to protect your most precious (mental) belongings, or accept to lose them, but you will also be asked to act normal and plan your future. Put a smile on your face even if a car just hit your face and you’ve lost very important letters in the water. Right now, the world is a hurricane to me. There is nothing I can do to fight back. Like in a hurricane, all I can do is run for my life, but I also have to think about how to plan this life. I have to know WHERE to run. In real life, nobody asks you to plan your life AFTER the hurricane. In this mental hurricane, I still have to work my PhD, teach English (which means I have to think about a progression for my students), tell my mother when I’ll come for my brother’s birthday, apply for different jobs in different countries but which may happen in the same time. All of this with my brain so full of piles of informations that I can barely understand when tomorrow is.

To my brain, there is no difference between the sounds in the corridors, the articles I’m reading online, the deadline and work I have to honor, a hand on my shoulder, the food I should eat. It’s all information, in different shape and process, but still, information, filling me to death because we can’t keep with such a rythm. So sometimes, after a huge day of work involving a lot of socialising and real problem, at night, I can’t eat. Because my body is full. Full of sounds, of informations, of faces, of smell, of thoughts and feelings that aren’t mine (or maybe ?). And when it comes to that point, my body says “stop, fucking stop, no room left”. It is so overwhelming, that it feels like the world is going to eat me whole... I’m so full with the rest of the world that I barely exist anymore. The world is eating me. (oh look ! we’re back to carnivorous plants, damn, this schizophrenia almost writes itself up...)

Lately, the hurricane has worsened and barely left me any time to breathe. No break. The sound of the wind is unbearable. Sometimes, when people talk to me, I hear them from very very far away, or it feels like they’re talking in a language I can’t speak. My brain hears the words, but it’s like “huh ? ok... what am I supposed to do with this ?” I hear the words, I can see the sentences they create, but... it just makes no sense. Like when you’re learning a new language and you’re reading stuffs. Your brain can recognise the world an maybe how the sentence is built because it starts to understand how the language works, but you won’t understand what’s written because you don’t have enough words for the moment. So you’re just looking at the sentence like “huh ? ok...”. The hurricane is turning my life into a giant poorly dubbed movie. I can see your lips moving, but it’s not well syncronized, or I can’t hear it, or you’re poorly translated. There is nothing new here when it comes to oral expression. But now, the hurricane is so strong that it reached the written expression... It’s terrible. I’m retreating from the world, I barely answer to people. I’m scared because I don’t understand what they want from me, what I’m supposed to answer, what’s expected from me. It’s like when I try to speak in German, I’m not sure I got everything you said, and I’m fighting with my three words vocabulary to answer. This all makes me feel so terribly alone. I cut myself from social media to slow down the hurricane, retreat as much as possible. But I feel so fucking and desperately alone. And in the same I’m unable to reach people. And when they do reach me, I can’t hear them. You can’t reach me because I can’t hear you. I can’t reach you because I’m stuck in a hurricane and I have to survive. The writer of my life turned me into an equilibrist, cursed to look for an impossible balance. I’m a dandelion in a hurricane. The wind is pulling me on every side and I’m fighting not to be torn apart the ground, I can feel my weeds being blown on every directions and I know I’ll never find them back. 

And I’m tired. Tired to fight against the wind. I’m just a dandelion fighting a fucking hurricane, what are my chances anyway ? Tired to wait for the eye of the storm. And even if there were a fucking eye of the storm, how big would it be ? I had a 3 days break at a festival, all the good I had is already drown under the hurricane of informations and not even 2 weeks later, I’m already back to “unable to feel or think”, back to the void. When I wake up, the hurricane of thoughts and informations restart in a blink of an eye (this one is a real metaphor, it takes me ages to open my eyes in the morning, so blink’s way too much an effort ! English language makes metaphor, not I) and I’m just “fuck, I’m still myself” and I want to quit. Not like in “I want to kill myself”, but just, I want to quit... like “the commute is too long and the job is too hard and not even what I applied for and the coworkers are assholes and I hate this job I quit”. 

But you can’t quit your life. You can’t just “quit” a hurricane. You have to survive it. And if you do survive it, you have to be thankful. 

So this is why I’ve been quite silent lately... I was fighting a hurricane that summers was making even worse (new information : you have huge breast. new information : you’re sweating. new information : sweating so much it hurts. new information : your bra hurts becausr of so much sweat. new information : if you take off your bra your skin will burn from the rash between your breasts and your chest. new information : you fat cow. new information : please make arm not touching belly it burns.) (this kind of worse). In summer, it’s hot, so you can’t even hide in a nice sweater of your blanket... so I had to live without these few pieces of armor I own... You had no idea how I’m waiting for the rain to be back...

I feel like this article is so so so long... I’m sorry, this feels so messy... it’s very hard to think straight in a hurricane twisting you in every direction, breaking your body in so many little parts, I’m trying my best, I hope there’s something left for you. You can follow me and ask questions on FB. If you want to help me telling the world about the reality of schizophrenia, you can consider buying me a “coffee” here. A huge thank you to all of you who already donated, you blew my mind away... (in a good way, not in a hurricane way ^^) Love to all of you. Please, be safe. 

PS : Huge thanks to Jorge who proofread my try to explain psychoanalysis and explained it to me again, he’s a powerful Dark Wizard of Psychoanalysis and an incredible sweet human being making the world a better place. He is also a great artist, making writing and painting and pixel art and drawing and a lot of things. You can check his work here. 

[insidethecrack]

The Poison of Paranoia : the tale of a thousand cuts

But I know just what it feels like To have a voice in the back of my head Like a face that I hold inside A face that awakes when I close my eyes A face watches every time I lie A face that laughs every time I fall (It watches everything) So I know now when it’s time to sink or swim That the face inside is hearing me Right beneath my skin

Linkin Park - Papercut

A few articles ago, we talked about the different symptoms (positive and negative). It’s high time we talk about paranoia, a huge part of the delusion…

Like any other part of schizophrenia, it is different for every one (and it can also happens to non-schizophrenic persons). I guess it’s going to be the easier to explain, since I guess you all quite know what it is. But my guess is like it’s one of this thing you never really know until you experience it. And since I hope none of you will have to experience it, I’m going to tell you as good as I can.

To sum it up quickly, paranoia is an irrationnal uncontrolable fear. It sounds easy said like that right ? Way too easy. Here are a few examples:

My friend thinks his fan wants to kill him. So sometimes he chose to suffer the terrible heat rather than turn it on. He can be scared to work at his desk because the fan is on it. And obviously, he can’t move the fan, because the fan wants to kill him. When it happens to you, I don’t even try to tell him out of this. There is nothing to tell him. No way I can prove him his fan is just a fan. It might sound insane to you, for whom a fan is just a fan. But, for one second, imagine something that wants to kill, give it any shape you might fear. Think about your biggest fear. Whether it’s a spider, a bear, your neighbour, your father… would you listen to me if I told you it is not dangerous for you ? I guess you wouldn’t. Because you’re scared. And fear is a signal your brain is giving you to tell you “your life is in danger ! run !”. So I could have the best argument of the world, I could summon all the reason and wisdom of the ages, you couldn’t believe me, even if a part of you know I’m right, a huge part of your brain is swimming in “run for your life” signals. It’s the same for my friend and his fan. He can’t just be told “it’s just a fan”, because it won’t solve the issue, it won’t take away the fear.

Another mate (which I know way less so I will only talk briefly about her so I don’t betray her life. Please keep that in mind) had it a very different ways. For years, she believed her family wanted her to marry a friend of her, a violent friend. And when this friend died, well, she thought he wasn’t dead and that everyone was lying to her. In her case, paranoia created a complitely different world.

Paranoia is a bit different for me…. Paranoia acts like a slow insidious poison. Paranoia pinches me every once in a while. Like… there is a Japanese execution method. It consists on doing very little cuts on the person, never touching an important organ or vein. But you cut a thousand times and more, and so slowly, the person loses all their blood. I don’t know why but my mind often comes back to this image. For many reasons. I think one of them is because paranoia works like that too.

It’s funny because I started the article with a quote by Linkin Park. I’m still very shaky about Chester’s suicide. Yesterday, I did a live video with a few people, singing them some LP’s song. And I told them I was afraid the neightbours would come and bang at the door to tell me to shut up. Talking about fear was a euphemism. I was fucking terrified. Because I was CONVINCED that they WILL come. It was not a question of “if”, it was a matter of when. I could feel them coming through the door and I was sure the banging would break my bones. I felt the same when my cat first came to me and it was hard for her and she kept meowing all night long. I was sure someone would finally crash the door to take her back from me. When I was teaching at the university and I wasn’t sure what I was doing, I was sure someone would smash the door and yell “you fucking uncompetent impostor how dare you ?” and they would drag me by the hair on the corridors until they rip off my skin and my head bleed.

I sang for the other grieving souls I did anything I could to help the cat feeling home I teached several university classes

But it was a fucking battle. A battle to act normal.

I’m scared anytime I hear people screaming outside and in the corridors. I’m scared when it bands on the walls and the roof. I’m scared when people yell at me. I’m scared when I don’t know how to talk to people.

Because paranoia keeps pouring its sweet poison. I often hear people talking about their abandon issues, how they always fear they"ll be abandonned by the people they love. I don’t have abandon issues. Because I am convinced the people I love will leave me. It’s not a fear. It’s a sure thing. As sure as gravity. Once again it’s not “if”, it’s “when”. And you can give me all the argument you want. You can’t shut up the “run for you life” signals. With the times, I found some ways to not let this certitude ruining me or my relationships. But it’s still there. You know how when people are in a couple, they can ask once in a while “do you love me?”. I never asked this to my boyfriend. But everynight, when we went to bed and I was slowly falling from awake to the troubled land of not really asleep, I would ask the exact same question “you’re not going right ?”. Every. Night. I have no idea if he thought it was cute or stupid or annoying. If he can be blammed for some of his actions regarding my mental health, he must be granted with the fact that he always patiently answer with kindess “I stay, not going anywhere”. And indeed, he was still here on the morning.

(it’s banging on the wall as I’m writing this… even the cat is not ok… it makes me want to cry)(and so I probably did something wrong and the end of the article is gone... fuck...)

Sometimes I’m jealous, because I see people asking to be reassured and a lot of people come to them to tell them they love them and everything is fine. I’m jealous, not because I think they do not deserve this (of course they do <3), I’m jealous because I can’t ask for the same. Either there would be no answer at all, proving no one cares, or because anyway, it wouldn’t solve anything. I’m a hole with no end. I would only eat other’s strength. And all that for nothing. So I don’t ask, because it’s wrong to let people consume themselves for me, to let them waste their energy on me when I can’t even use it. I guess I’m jealous because I wish I could ask, I wish someone could at least numb this dragon, even a tiny bit. 

I’m scared when I hear screaming and have no idea where it comes from, or why there are screams. I’m scared when people yell at me. I’m scared when I’m not sure how I’m supposed to address them. I’m scared when I don’t know how I’m supposed to say hello to people. I’m scared people might read what I write in my journal so I don’t write and the words rot in my mind and fill my blood. I’m scared people might know what I do on my computer so I don’t do it (from porn to vlog I’m just curious). I’m scared people might hear what I think since I can hear what they think so I hide and code my own thoughts (and it feeds the monsters because I don’t keep track of the code so no one can find it). I’m scared to answer youtubers when they ask stuffs because I’m scared they will throw me to their crowd for fun. I’m scared everyone will laugh as soon as I open my mouth so I shut up most of the time. 

I’m destroying my all potential because of all this and I know it. And there is nothing I can do. There is no way to stop the “run for you life” signals. Even when it’s more “stay in the shadow” signals. This is my paranoia, my poison : the thousand cuts. Sooner or later, I will lose this battle. And my blood will be spoiled on the ground.

Not if. When.

[insidethecrack]

Make Schizophrenia Great Again

I realised a few weeks ago that I was living with schizophrenia for 10 years now. HAPPY BIRTHDAY I guess. I was asked when was the birthday day, but I don’t think there is such a thing. This whole thing started when I was 16, then it got worse and worse until The Worst happened around my twenty, since then, we’re slowly recovering. So basically I guesss it’s more 11 years now… (in French we say “time goes by so fast when you’re having fun) Anyway, I think it was time to celebrate. There is a lot of negativity on this blog, not because my life is always dark, but because the dark parts are the one in need of explanation. So today, we’re going to talk in a more lightful way. We’re going to talk about what I’ve learned so far, what has been improved. Sometimes, it’s good too to look at the bright side !

[1] We were right on how to deal with this It might sound silly or childish - and perhaps it is, I don’t really care for what it worths, it’s not the point - but it is very important. My scchizophrenia has filled my mind with thoughts that weren’t mine, with words that weren’t mine. I wake up and don’t know whose body it is. Etc. We already covered this isssue I think. It is already a terrible thing to experience, but the shrinks made it worse. Yes,the people who were supposed to help made it worse. They didn’t listen when I said the meds were killing me. They said contradictory things. Some even threw things like "this is not what you feel” at my face. This is one of the most violent thing I ever lived (and I am schizophrenic so…). I cut my treatment against all medical advices. I don’t say this is the thing to do (or maybe I do, but maybe don’t do it the way I did), but no one would listen to me. Seriously, here is a conversation I had with the psychiatrist :

me : meds are killling me… I’m afraid I’m getting addicted to them. My body is not functionning well. The voices are louder. I want to stop, I need to stop. him : we should raise the dosage

This is verbatim. We could write a whole article about violences like this one, and we probably will. So it felt like our only option was to jump the cliff. We stopped everything : meds and shrinks. Because they were only proving that my mind was a wreck you couldn’t trust, I couldn’t trust. “not all shrinks” but at that time, I wasn’t lucky. I am still struggling with the idea that my mind worths something. But I was right and they were wrong. There are other answers, better answers, answers that fitted my needs way better.

[2] We learned to listen This is probably the most important thing to learn, whether you’re neurotypical or not. Sometimes I wonder if it’s not harder to do when you’re neurotypical. I mean, I litteraly have voices screaming when something is wrong. And monsters appears when something scary is happening. So… I wonder how you do that without any material manifestation of your thoughts (or maybe neurotypical are all geniuses living in a world of abstract ideas ?)(don’t worry, so many neurotypicals cried on my shoulder, I know this is all as confused for you as it is for me, it’s jut not the same kind of confused). There will be a whole article on this, about what I call the “schizophrenic linguistics”. I call it this way because it’s my discovery of the linguistic sciences which really helped me. It’s a bit complicated and I’ll explain further later, but for now on, just consider this : monsters and voices are not happening randomly. They mean something. They happen to say something. Something I can’t deal with, or I can’t handle at the moment. So these thoughts I can’t process (too violent, too dangerous, or just out of words and language) take the shape of voices / monsters. And you know how they say that a soap bubble is round because it’s the most suited shape for its purpose ? Well, it’s the same for schizophrenia. Voices and monsters don’t have random shape. There is a reason why a voice gets mean and insulting, or why carnivorous plants are suddenly growing in my bed. As scary as they are, we learned to listen to them, to decode them, to translate them. And the difference is huge. 10 years ago, life was a permanent nightmare only interrupted by the moments I passed out. Now, the number of delirious crisis a year can be counted on my hands. I hear or see things on a daily basis, but most of them are now unharmful. Because we listen, we pay attention. So they don’t need to yell or throw things at me to get my attention. It’s still not perfect, and shit happens every once in a while. As I say, schizophrenia is no exact science. But we’re getting better.

[3] There are many ways to understand the world Chemistry was not the solution for us. Linguistic was. And believe me, I don’t think it’s something anyone could have planned. I don’t even pretend it’s the solution for other schizophrenic people. This confirmed something I knew for a very long time : words rule my world. Language was my only solution against the madness. What can be named can be understood can be explained can be mastered. So I clung to them even tighter than before and I dived even deeper into linguistic, making it a central piece of my PhD work (in theatre!). I rely on words, language and linguistic to understand the world, a world full of monsters and mean voices that I decided to consider real.  And this, this taught me to accept any vision of the world. Not to say that I agree with any visions. But I am able to accept that your world can be completely different from mine. You believe in God and your faith has tons of proofs of his existence? Ok. You believe you’re a wolf trapped in the body of a human ? Ok. You believe abortion should be forbidden because you defend life at all cost (including the mother’s life) ? Ok, I think youre an ignorant assholes but ok, I can understand how someone comes to think so. Sometimes, I feel like my mind is water : it has no hape of its own and will simply embrace the shape of the bottle. It’s not always easy, but thanks to this, I’m able to switch from one point of view to another in a very short second. Therefore, I’m an excellent mediator and translator... 

[4] I can translate neurotypical I’ve learned how to communicate with neurotypical. I often say I should have a personal life translator to communicate with them, because neurotypical doesn’t know how to language properly. Sorry to tell you, this too will probably fill a whole article, but it’s terrible how neurotypical people never ask the question they truely want to be answered. You always have to guess. This might sound obscure to you, so here are a few examples (all true stories, obviously) :

him : would you be interested to watch this movie ? > true question : would you like to watch it with me ?

her : do you want to see the pictures of my travel ? > true question : can I show you the pictures of my travel because it’s important to me ? (important = her need to share, not what I want)

him : what are you reaing / watching ? > true question : hey I’m bored and trying to connect with you

her [at a funding interview] : it’s not a question but there are plurilingual plays in the Middl Age. *silence implying I have to speak* > true meaning : WTH I STILL DON’T KNOW PLEASE SOMEBODY  FUCKING TELL ME

As you can see, I know the translation for some of them now. Unfortunately, I still got lost in translation every once in a while (which can be hurtful both for me and the other person, and this is terrible because the person doesn’t even know why they’re hurt and I have no clue how I could have avoided it since I just answered their question). I’ve developped tools to translate : some kind of idiomatic lexic, ways to reformulate the person’s question so I can make sure I fully understood (or they can correct it). In case of despair, my tendancy to overrecord every information is useful because it allows me to ask friends for a translation by telling them the whole story with all the details. Neurotypical can’t language and I can’t communicate. But I’m improving, so the neurotypical around me are getting better at languaging too since they have to be very clear when they talk to me, and they keep this ability with others. EVERYONE WINS... thanks to my broken mind. (you’re welcome)

[5] I help neurotypical better languaging So my relatives are now way more careful when they talk because they had to use a most accurate language. But I keep fighting for a better use of language (because, once again, I am not its only victim, it’s just that I am a conscious victim of language). And I happened to be at the perfect place for this fight : I’m a teacher. At the university, I taught methodology and theatre analysis to the first years students. I overexplained all the university rules,  their how and why, translated the new words they will constantly hear, explained them when to worry when to take a step away. When I could, I did my best to say outloud what was just implied (but still required !). It was very important to me that the first years students understand this universe as soon as possible, maybe it’s even more important than their studies. My thought was : if you know the rule, then you can properly play the game and even play the rules.But if you don’t, you will be eaten by the rules, sooner or later, no matter if you worked hard... University can be a very obscur and absurd world when you first come to it and I remember the frustration of not even knowing where to look for an information... And today, every once in a while, I still waste time and energy and credibility because I can’t catch the underlined rules that everyone consider granted but never explained.

I’m also a private teacher of... English ! And I think I’m a good one. Because I understand so much how you can find yourself fighting with the words. I know the frustration of being unable to be understood, or to understand the other. I know the fear of talking. I know the “it should be simple but it’s fucking hard for me” feeling. I get it. Even if English is now obvious to me, as obvious as my natural French, I understand all of this. So I’m very patient with my students. I always say : my job is not to teach you English, my job is to learn how you think, how your thought process goes so I can help you learning English. The rest is nothing but grammar. And grammard is not so hard when you know how to put it in your brain. I love the way my students always ask me unexpected questions. Nothing in language is obvious, nothing is definitive. And their questions always move me to a new point. It changes my view on things. Which can help me better understand the problem of the next student. I never sell my students miracle or magic ways. I’m always honest with them “no, I have no idea how much time you’ll need to be fluent” “no, there is no absolute rule”. My ability to listen and my extreme empathy help me be a better language teacher : I know the intimate relationship we have with language. 

[6] I create new unexpected connections. Schizophrenic brains don’t have boarders. This will be better explain when I’ll write the article about linguistic (because this is what helped me understand that part too)(linguistic is my new sexy religion), but my thoughts are not stocked into clear boxes. And when I say “thoughts” I mean : feeling + knowledge + memories + cooking recipe + songlyrics + random unnamed stuffs + probably something that was chocolate before being forgotten here for years. My thought process is a train : one wagon pulls another which pulls another which pulls another and by the end of a sentenc I may not remember how I started it and how I ended up here. It may sound very messy, and it is, but sometimes it’s a very good thing. Because I create new connections neurotypical don’t or can’t see. And these connections are obvious to me.  

Maybe you need a concrete example on this one. My PhD subject is about multilingual theatre. It was already the subject of my master’s thesis. The first thing you do when starting a research like that is check what have been done. And gues what was done for my subject ? Nothing. Or so little... The way I wanted to work on this has never been experienced before. I was even told it was impossible. But I’m one of this people who answer “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED” when you tell them they can’t do something. And I fucking did it. And I had all the possible congratulations. So I moved on with the PhD, still on multilingual theatre, but with a different approach. (I want to work more on the connection between music and language on these plays) Lately, we had to asses the work I did during my first year. One of the teacher of the committe told me that “it’s very new what you’re doing. Usually, people work on this question either with socio-linguistic or musicology, but not both in the same time. Plus, the way you connect music and lanugage through the voice sounds very promising and new”. Yep, voices may be the key. All it takes to get that was a schizophrenic PhD student. 

[7] I’m still alive, still not crazy Maybe it’s the most important thing. Here is a list of achievements :

I went back to university and finally found my place. I did a great master’s thesis, currently fighting for my PhD

I directed two theatre plays

I acted in many others, including some with professional directors with whom I got out of my confort zone

I met some of my best friends today, tolerant and inclusive friends who are always here to translate the world for me. I was also in a couple and had some one night stands.

I published a novel, wrote several theatre plays, still writing 

I tried to enter in many theatre school (even if it didn’t work, that wasn’t something I could imagine doing 10 years ago, when I chose univeristy because there is no selection to go in)

I teach ! I’m scared to hurt people whenever I open my mouth to talk, but... I teach. And I’m good at it !

I’m still not very good to defend myself but working on it.

Some of the voices are now able to communicate in less sybilin messages. 

It’s been some hell of a roadtrip. And we’re far from over. 

It’s a long way home.  Luckyly, we learned what were the best shoes to walk such long distances. 

[insidethecrack]

Would you go neurotypical ?

The other day, a schizophrenic friend asked me this :

 “If they found a way to grow us a new brain, a clean one, would you take it ? Not pills, a new brain without the rot. Would you become the nuerotypical if you could ?”

I thought about it for a few minutes. I really wish I could have answered “no”. The thing is, I said yes. Yes, I would definitely go neurotypical. He wouldn’t. Telling me how about it was his life, his body, his mind, his poison, and that makes him who he is. He told me were stronger than most people. That he was able to live even if his fan wanted to kill him, that I cleaned the appartment even if it was fulled with carnivorous plants. And all of this. In a way, I know he is right. But still, I would go neurotypical in the blink of an eye without any second thought. 

I hate it... this is no fucking picnic... I know everyone has their own shit and this is not a “who got it worse” challenge. But why do I have to fight like this all the time for everything ? This is unfair. What did I do to deserve such a punishment ?

I live trapped in a body and a mind which aren’t mine

I’m convinced that I don’t exist, I’m just fucking smoke vanishing in the air

I’m convinced that all my loved one will give up on me when they realise I don’t exist and I’m just some kind of very sophisticated imaginary friend

I don’t know if I’m supposed to I you she it we this shit to talk about myself

My body has no limit and I have to hurt it to find them back

My appartment is filled with carnivorous plants

There are eyes watching me from everywhere

I code my own journal in case someone would read it

I code my agenda in case someone would read

I multiply the thoughts in my head in case someone could hear me think

I’m afraid of silence 

I’m afraid of the monsters under the bed

I can’t tell my memories and my nightmares (awake and asleep) apart

Therefore I can’t heal from traumatic experience

My life is turned into horror story you tell yourself for fun

I can’t touch people because I’m afraid they could break me or swallow me

but I’m dying inside to be touched and have my body limits back

I can’t be angry because I can’t deal with propperly and it will kill me

I can’t understand implicit content therefore integrate in society is a daily olympic challenge

I hear people thinking

and they all think I’m the shittiest thing on Earth

sometimes they even want to kill me

And I can’t tell all this. I’m not allowed to. For so many fucking reasons. Stigma. Or people can’t hear it because it’s too hard, or too far from what they can’t understand. 

I know I should say “no, I’ll keep the rot, it makes me who I am”. This is what all the inspirationnal shit tells you. Accept your flaws. bla bla bla. Shut up. It’s unfair. Why should I accept unfairness ? I’m sorry if I disappoint you. I won’t be inspirationnal porn... I wish I could tell you that I’m happy with my schizophrenia, maybe one day I will. But for the moment, all I was able to do, was to accept to live with it. It was already so much work. But my whole life is a fight. I fight from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep. This is not supposed to be this way... So if I had to chose between keep fighting, and turned neurotypical, I’d chose the second path. The only thing I know for sure, is the end of the fight : me dying. Sooner or later, I will lose the fight. I will be defeated. Why would I keep going an impossible battle if I could live a fightless life ? 

Would I be less “me” if I wasn’t schizophrenic ? Schizophrenia, the madness, Evelyn, they are parts of me, but it’s not me. Just like my hair is not me. It’s just a part of me (the only part I like by the way). If tomorrow I shave my hair, it will still be me. A bold me. But still me. Sure, schizophrenia taught me extreme tolerance, sure, it has a deep impact on my art and my PhD research, I won’t deny it. But would I be an ignorant selfabsorbed person without it ? Would I suck as a writer and a PhD student ? I want to believe the answer to that question is no. Just like you remove an infected appendix doesn’t make you less you, if one day, I can be rid of my schizophrenia, it won’t make me less me.

Well, at least I hope so...

So, I really hope you won’t be disappointed if one day I shave my head... Sorry, I don’t have what it takes to be inspiration porn... I’m just an exhausted surviving fighter. 

(you can join the conversation and follow the blog more easily on FB)

[insidethecrack]

To be or not to be is not the right question

I’m a ghost in the mist My life slips away I wander unseen I don’t make any sound I’m lost in the mist No one showed me the way Locked in by my fears With my knees on the ground

Lacuna Coil - Ghost in the mist

[TW : graphic mentions of self-harming]

Once again, let’s fuck up some schizophrenia cliches.

You might not know it, but schizophrenia can be composed of several types of symptoms : the positive symptoms and the negative symptoms. Psychiatry world is a weird world were “positive” doesn’t mean “good things” and “negative” bad things. 

A positive symptom is something that is added to the “normal” state. Most of the time, it’s what you call “hallucination”. I guess it’s not normal that eyes are following me, that I can feel the words getting stuck in my mouth and cutting my tongue, or that there are monsters under the bed. The positive symptoms are easy to understand for neurotypical people, or at least the principle of positive symptoms is easy. Because if you paid attention, you saw that I put some “” around hallucination. I stoped talking of them as hallucinations for a few years now. Years ago, when Madness ruled my world and the shrinks only thought about feeding me with drugs, I refused to say I was “sick”, that I had a “disease”. Because a disease is something you can cure, or at least understand. But in their mouth, this disese, schizophrenia, it sounded like a death sentence. And I wouldn’t let some guys decide of my death date just because they wear white an have degrees hanged on the wall (stop doing that, we get it, you’re intelligent. Now stop being a dickhead and listen when we talk to you because that’s what you were supposed to learn to get that degree you’re so proud of. You’re ridiculous). Years later, I also stoped calling them hallucinations. They wouldn’t stop. 

Being schizophrenic mean being stuck between reality and not-reality, and most important, being unable to tell which one is which. So great, here I was, with stuff that don’t exist and wouldn’t go and I would never be able to tell if they did exist. Except that I can. In fact, the solution was fucking easy. When I was stuck in Madness, NOTHING excisted, me included, it was a fucking nightmare made of endless pain and suffering. I was stuck between my body feeding my brain with informations that wasn’t truthful (the positive symptoms we’re talking about) while my reason and the world outside were telling this couldn’t be, this wasn’t. I was stuck between these two positions, literraly teared apart like a child between his divorced parents and being forced to chose. What would you chose between your body and you reason ? I bet you can’t answer. This was my personnal hell, this is still, so often my personnal hell. And no one can take me out of it. 

So a few years ago, I made a choice : the choice not to chose. I changed the paradigm. I decided it ALL existed. Everything was real. The world as everyone expercience it, but also MY voices, MY monsters. And yes, I started calling them MINE. Because they are... voices, monsters, they are all broken pieces of my soul and this reality couldn’t work without accepting this... even the monsters. It might sound scary to accept monsters as a part of reality. But you know, real monsters are way easier to defeat than unreal monsters. It’s not easy, it doesn’t solve all the problem with a magic wand, but things got managable, which was a fucking improvement. Sure, every once in a while, a monster get totally out of control and shit gets really hard and scary, but at least now I have a chance : to talk with them BEFORE, or to defeat them, or to heal myself if I lost the battle (which what is happening right now... but you can’t always win I guess...).

And that was the easy part. Because yes, dear neurotypical readers, positive symptoms are the easy part (a lot of worlds have a different meanings when youre schizophrenic, I guess “easy” is one of them). And now, we’re going to talk about the rotten cherry on the poisonned cake : the negative symptoms. If positive symptoms adds things to reality, you would have guessed that negative symptoms takes away things from your reality. It’s often called “dissociation”, and that shit is one hellish dragon... When I’m really tired, I don’t feel the pain. I can hit a wall, burn my finger while cooking, twist my ankle or bite myself to blood while sleeping and don’t feel a thing. More precisely, I feel something. My brain will record a shock, a too hot feeling, a “this bone is not supposed to turn that way” feeling, but that’s it. I often find bruises or cut or burning marks on my skin and my face will just be “but... why ?”. And yes, this can be dangerous. Sometimes I should go to the doctor and I don’t because I don’t have the pain information so I don’t know how seriously my body can be injured. Or I understimate how tired or ill I am. And it’s just the beginning. Because, then, I don’t feel the cold, so if I don’t tell myself “ow, it’s fucking January, put on a coat to go to the grocery store !” I can go there just wearing a tshirt. Clever me. And then the hunger feeling goes away. And I have to remember myself that human being have to eat three times a day. And then the tiredness feeling even goes away so why should I try to sleep when I can just keep on going with the insomnias why should I even bother to get some rest when I don’t feel tired and I can just make some more extra work ?

Maybe you’re starting to think there is not much more that can be taken way from a person... Sorry but not sorry, we’re still not done. The worst is still to come so bare with me a little (please) and let’s eat that fucking poisonned cake will we...

These things are hard to deal with, they ask for a lot of spoons. Because I have to THINK things that are natural to you (what time of the year is it ? so I can dress properly. Have I eaten today and what ? should I eat more ? how long since my last sleep ? Maybe I should put my hand under cold water, just in case because i just put it on the hot cooker. This strange feeling in my foot is not getting better for a few months, maybe we should call a doctor). I have to be hyper careful, I have to be, once again, in a state of hyper control. All. The. Fucking. Time. And remember ! we also have to deal with the positive symptoms which add monsters and alarms and all kind of things to my reality in the same fucking time. And alone. Remember this, always alone. 

But here comes a time, and believe me, it always comes, even in the good times (so magine during the bad periods...), when you just realise... I don’t feel pain when I get hurt... I’m not hungry when I don’t eat... I’m not tired when I don’t sleep... I’m not cold when I’m not properly dressed... I’m not.... I’m not... I’m not

I’m not.

Because YES, it also takes out vocabulary and grammar. But you don’t need much words to express this : you don’t even exist anymore. There is ALWAYS a moment where I end up feeling like I simply don’t exist. And this is scary. “Hallucinations” can be handable, but delusion is not. Delusion is a fucked up belief, a fucked up reality you can’t do otherwise but to follow because this is all you have. It’s different for every schizophrenic person, but my schizophrenia convinced me I don’t even exist. I’m like the smoke in winter, you know, when it’s fucking cold and you can see your breathe coming out of your mouth and they it just disappear in the air. This is what I am : I am a story people tell themselves and when they’re done they throw me away, I just disappear in the air and no one realises it because it’s not even important. It’s just smoke in the air. 

If there is no one to interract with me during this moment, I get so fucking scared because it really means I don’t exist. And this is where things get REALLY scary. Because I would do anything not to disappear. I won’t speak because if I let words out I will lose matter and I can’t afford it. If I get nauseus I’m afraid to throw up because once again I will lose matter. So I probably won’t eat because it’s easier. And I consider self-harming because if I can feel pain it means I exist. I’ve been so far into self-harming, because I couldn’t feel the pain, I would always do worse and more... 

It’s funny because sometimes people confused my self-destructive behaviours for suicidal behaviours. I’m not suicidal. Because, in order to die you must be alive first and to be alive  you must exist. Since I don’t exist I can’t die.

It’s just basic mathematics. I’m not suicidal, I’m desperately looking for ways to prove I exist. I don’t ask you to understand, because I guess it’s very hard if you don’t experience it. You can’t end something that has no beginning, something that has no borders. You just can’t. Since knowing I have a beginning doens’t kill the delusion, I have to be sure of the borders of my body and mind... and it’s so hard... 

Because, once again, it can get worse (I’m telling you, this shit has no fucking end). Do you know what my “crisis” (or “psychotic episodes” as they like to call it, doesn’t it sound like a nice scary serie on Netflix ?) look like ? If I don’t find a way out of this, the positive symptoms take more and more space, the monsters totally get out of control and once the monsters are freed, they won’t leave before they had the blood they were promised. And since they don’t exist in your reality, but only in mine, I’ll be the one they’ll eat. And here comes the pain. The real one, the terrifying one. Because it’s not your classic pain when you know what hurt you and where it hurts. Hell no... it’s the essence of pain, the pure pain. It’s like when you “I’m cold”, but instead it’s “I hurt”. It’s like all your bones break and rip your veins and every breathe rip your lungs and mouth and every heart bit feels your blood with frozen stones that will rips them even more and you can’t move and you don’t know where you body stops so you’re watching your blood dropping from the ceilling and your head spinning in the kitchen while your fingers are scratching this wall or this one or maybe it’s your belly you don’t even know anymore because the only real thing is pain. In fact, it’s so much the only thing left that you don’t feel the pain, you are the pain. And you would sell your soul so this pain can end, but don’t you rmember ? you don’t exit ! therefore you don’t have a soul. And even though, you are the pain, so what do you think will happen to you if the pain stops ?

Yes. That’s right. You will be like a breathe, out of a mouth in winter when it’s fucking cold. You’ll disappear in the air. And no one will notice.  Ever.  Because who counts their breathe ? Who really takes the time to enjoy them ? And why this one breathe more than another ?

And this is how I disappear. I don’t fear death, I fear disappearing. 

This is how schizophrenia works : it adds crappy stuffs to your reality, and takes away others, and this collection of symptoms create delusions that are as strong as gravity in our mind. 

Once again, this was a very long and confused article. Thank you for reading, don’t hesitate to ask if something is not clear. Also the blog now has a FB page if it’s easier for you to follow. 

[insidethecrack]

Why am I mad at the cinema...

I know some of you were waiting for the next part of the Dandelion Effect articles, but something came out and it couldn’t really wait. Thank you for your patience!

I just found out about the movie Split, and I wish I didn’t, because I spent a huge part of my Saturday crying. Here it is: another movie with a multiple personality disordered killer. Cynical sarcastic me: How great is that? Really, that was really all the world needed. So new and provocative. Angry me: aren’t they never gonna get tired of this shit?

No they’re not, sorry angry me. And there are so many reasons to be angry I don’t even know how to start the list… So maybe I should answer to what I’ve been told (most of the time by very well intentioned people who really wanted to make me feel better)(I write this because if you’re one of them I want you to know that I know you mean well, and I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at the world who let you think these are good arguments, or let movie like Split exists. Also I probably love you in a way or another so I want to make sure I can clearly explain you my point and not hurting you in the process, I really hope I won’t fail at this last part…). Sorry if, once again, the article is particularly messy. You can ask me to reexplain something if it’s not clear enough.

This movie is not about schizophrenia. Truth is, this not the problem. Really. I didn’t calm down when I learnt that for once cinema did tell apart schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. Reason 1: there is nothing to be proud of here, that’s basic research work. Last week, I told my students I wouldn’t congratulate them for coming up at the right time, they are supposed to do so, that’s the basic rule of school. Same here. When you make a movie about a mental illness, it’s basic work to simply know a few facts about those mental illnesses. But as students don’t show up on time at class, cinema doesn’t often do its basic research work. Which leads us to reason 2: cinema never really cares about the differences between schizophrenia and multiple personality together. So here we are, schizophrenic and MPD people, stuck in the same boat thanks to the cinema even if our struggles can barely be compared. As a schizophrenic friend brilliantly put it yesterday “We are in the same boat do to our shared frustration of being forced into the same boat”. Quite ironic isn’t it? So I will consider we are in the same boat. Because even if the movie does make the difference, it’s still fucking uncool with MPD people, and it’s the same problem. Plus, the cinema has forgotten this difference so many times a lot of people barely know there is one.

People can do the difference between reality and fiction! No they don’t. And I should know, I’m schizophrenic, so I know quite a lot about the ability to know the difference between reality and non-reality. And believe me, one of the biggest problem of neurotypical persons is that they are unable to consider that there is more than one reality, or that their reality is biased, which means it’s their reality and not The Reality. So here is the problem: there are a fucking lot of stigmas around mental illnesses. And there are even more stigmas around schizophrenia and MPD. Do you know why? Cinema, TV shows, medias… Can you name movies where the schizophrenic / MPD person IS NOT a fucking psycho killer? I can name one… only one. When there are so many psycho killer… Where are the movies / books / stories where people like me gets to be teacher doctors physicians parents social workers lawyer singers or whatever? Where are they? We need those stories so bad…

For the world: it’s human, when you’re shown with the exact version of the reality over and over again, you tend to believe there is no other way. It’s such an old trick, and it works for everything. You’re waging war and you need your people to kill with no second-thought? Keep portraying the enemy as rapist/killer/monster and no problem! You want people to accept to lose their freedoms in the name of security? Keep telling them they’re in danger and that’s the solution! You want people to buy water/milk because of the taxes or just because you produced too much? Keep telling them science proved you need to drink 1,5liters of water a day! The difference is, no one really wants people to believe schizophrenic / MPD people are psycho killers. (well I hope there is no one…)(I shouldn’t have written that, it’s giving ideas to my paranoia) But it’s the same principle: it’s the only thing you ever about schizophrenic / MPD people. Maybe you don’t realise it, but your mind is already biased, even if you think it’s not.

To sound a bit less judgy, I will also judge me. I realised that I was getting more suspicious or afraid or uncomfortable around people of colour. How ridiculous is that? A lot. Objectively, intellectually, I know that they are not more dangerous than white people. I KNOW that, I believe it, there is no way you can make me say that coloured people are more dangerous. But still, when I go home alone and there are groups of coloured people, I feel a bit more in danger than with white people. So there was a difference between what my brain knows and what my body knows. I had to dissect myself to solve this issue (that’s the good point of being schizophrenic: your mind is so broken there is always one part to dissect and judge the other one. Sometimes, it can be very useful!). The answer was obvious: most of the time, they are the bad guys of the movies, and even in the news. Even if I didn’t believe in those racist bullshits, I’ve heard and eaten so much of it without knowing it that my mind was biased. I’m working on it because I can’t let that happen. (and now I’m pretty happy to announce that my paranoia is quite the same around coloured AND white people)(what? I never said white people didn’t scare me)

You don’t realise it, but movies about schizophrenic / MPD killer (or “crazy persons needing to be committed to the closest asylum” which is our second option) are doing the same to you. Even if a part of your brain knows that you’re watching fiction, another part of your brain is taking notes. The only way to get out of the bias in your mind, is to realise that they do exist. Which means that you must be ready to consider that bias may exist in your mind. Believe me, neurotypical persons simply aren’t the best at this… Not because they are bad people or stupid people or any bullshit like this, but because the simple question of reality has never been a problem to them. So please, do realise that there are bias in your mind. We all have some of our own. And maybe you already know and you’re already working on it (if so, you’re already working at making the world a better place and it’s great!).

But a lot of people don’t. And it’s hard for us. If you’re fighting bias like sexism homophobia racism and all their friends, you know what I’m talking about. It’s the same. Except that I can sometimes try to explain a guy why what he’s saying is sexist and why it’s a problem. But when it comes to psychophobia…  Have you ever experienced being described as a psycho killer at your workplace? Because I did.  Sure, my coworkers were joking “we should be careful, customers will drive us crazy and we’ll turn schizophrenic and kill them!” SO FUNNY isn’t it? I guess I have no sense of humour. At this exact same moment, my schizophrenia was killing me. Evelyn, the Madness, was turning my life into a gigantic big brother experiment. All day long I was followed by men covered of eyes, literally, they had eyes all over their faces their arms their chest. They were counting my steps my breathes my words. They were counting down. I had no way to know how much step breathe and word I have left, the only thing I know was that when the countdown would hit 0, I would disappear in pain. I had to work with this fear, doing panic attacks in my car, wanting to hurt myself at work to make it stop. But the eyes were always watching me. And I was alone dealing with this. No one I could tell. I was almost glad when some big shit happens at work because when it did, people would assume I was pissed because of it and wouldn’t ask anything, I wouldn’t have to lie to them or to hide what was really happening. And while I was dealing with all this alone, my coworkers were joking about schizophrenic psycho killers. Which proved me that I should shut up. Which makes everything worse. Hide yourself hide your scars keep saying the voices.

How many times have I chosen silence over talking my issues? How many times have I almost died because of this choice? I’m afraid to say anything to anyone because what if I didn’t prove them enough that I wasn’t a crazy psycho killer and they think I am and just abandon me ?

And here I am, day after day, trying to fight the silence, but ending up choosing silence on a regular basis because there are still so many movies like Split to prove me that silence is my best option. Those movies are feeding my isolation, our isolation. Those movies are making it worse.

Because they maintain the terrible representation people have of us. But also because they can trigger us.

This point may be more personal, but I’m sure it can work in a way or another for other people (even if it can be slightly different for them). One of the main point of Evelyn is that I’m a monster, like the worst thing that ever happened on Earth, something terrible that should have never happened. To prove her wrong, and prove me I’m worthy, I try to do all the good I can. It might sound cheesy, and maybe it is. But anyway, I’m doing my best on every field: I try to be here for my friend, to listen to them, to help them in any way, to keep their secret, to bring them home when drunk, etc. I try to learn as many things as possible to be a better feminist and “activist” and understand as many different points of view as I can. I try to produce the best research I can in my PhD so it can help people in different ways. I try to write for other, to tell stories. Etc etc. On the one hand, I hope it can balance the rot in me. On the other hand, like Evelyn says, as I’m doing all of those things to balance the rot, it only proves that I’m rotten, so it doesn’t really count, I’m still a fucking piece of rot. (I’m pretty sure I will die of exhaustion in trying to balance the rot side of me) Can you guess what happens when one more movie with a schizophrenic / MPD killer is released? Yes, Evelyn earns more points to show me how rotten I am. Why am I bothering with all these when the world has already decided I was nothing more than a crazy monster? Those movies are not harmless, they kill all my work to be a better person and to prove myself that I’m not a monster, it’s only the madness in me talking. Thank you Split, I’ll have to start from scratch again this week… I feel so dispossessed of my own life and mine since yesterday…

You can’t judge the quality of a movie without seeing it. Maybe I should have started here. The quality of the movie is not the point. I don’t care. I couldn’t care less. In fact, it could be The Best Movie Ever Made I wouldn’t care anyway. I’m not judging the quality of the movie. I’m judging the world allowing this kind of movies without offering other possibilities for schizophrenic / MPD people. I’m judging a world where people can calling me a murderer and I don’t even have the right to be angry because if I do I will be taken to be the next psycho killer and I will not be able to deal with this irony. I’m judging a world where people are allowed to judge schizophrenic / MPD people without knowing them, but where schizophrenic / MPD people are not allowed to judge movies without seeing them. Don’t you feel that there is some kind of fucked priorities here? Why can my coworkers can joke about people like me being a psycho killer without problem but I can’t say this movie is a piece of crap without people falling on my back?

I don’t mind if you liked this movie. It’s ok. It’s not my point. If you’ve paid to see this at the theatre I hope you had a good moment. But please remember, those movies are feeing misrepresentations about people like me. Thanks to those misrepresentations, I’ve lost friends, boyfriends. Friends of mine have lost their job. This didn’t happen to me because I always find a way to keep it secret, but I’m pretty sure it’s better if the parents of my students never learn this. All I’m asking you if you’ve enjoyed the movie (or other of the same kind), is to consider the bias it’s making in your mind. And when you have spotted them, please, spread the word. People like me need people you to be more aware so we can feel safe. We need people like you not to feed our madness.

I spent my Saturday crying and asking friends to tell me I was not a monster. I belong to the lucky ones: I have friends who know my struggles and are ready to help and shit like this hits the fan. Some people don’t. It’s not written on our faces. And maybe you worked with schizophrenic / MPD people. Maybe some of your friends are. My coworkers never know. Some of my close friends still don’t know. Be careful. We need to know we can trust you before telling you. We need to know you won’t abandon us, proving us we are the monsters they show.

The article is already so fucking long, but I want to end it on something positive, something that could help both neurotypical and people with a mental illness. It’s an amazing idea coming from a non-less amazing person from the Sloths group. What about collecting the movies / books / shows with good representation of mental illnesses? If you know some, please, let me know, I will compile a list and share with the world. I want to discover another bias in my brain: our tendency to always see the bad things, not the good ones. I’m sure there are goods stories told in the world about all this. If you know some, even one, throw the name!

Thank you for your reading, your concern, your loving and reassuring words.

PS: this article is 4 pages long. Look! I didn’t chose silence this time! How great is that?

[insidethecrack]

The Dandelion Side of me

I think this one is going to be hard to understand for most of non-psychotic people, I’ going to do my best but can’t proise anything (which means if you have any questions, feel free to ask for more explanation). (update : I didn’t say half what I wanted to say on the subject... it was horribly damned long, tell me if you want the rest of it...)

One of the basic of psychose is that you don’t have boundaries for your mind or your body. You might not get what he means, I’ve discovered it’s very hard to understand that when you don’t experience it. So let’s start slowly with body boundary. When you watch your hand you can clearly see the outlines of it. I’m even sure you don’t actually have to watch it, you can feel your hand, you know where it is, you know it’s yours. Most of the time, you don’t have to think to know where are the parts of your body. You can touch people with no fear because you will always know where your body ends and where the other’s starts.  Well, know that’s a blessing and I spend insomnia after insomnia cursing you for being so blessed and not even know you are (but don’t take it too personnal...).

Here is my “morning routine”. Wake up. Mind instantly launches like it’s a fucking machine with only an on/off switch. Figure out when I am, then where. Looking for the piees of my body. Checking that every pieces of it is in the right place. Are there any pain anywhere ? If the night was good, this routine takes 3 minutes maybe. If night was bas, it can go up to 2 hours before I’m even able to get out of bed. Because how can you stand on your feet if you feel like the bones of your legs are misplaced ? Like, not broken, but laying somewhere on the kitchen floor while your hair are clearly hanging froom the roof ? Spoiler alert : you can’t. It is physicaly impossible. Since body has no proper boundaries, only blurry outlines, waking up means having my body all over the place. And I have to think to bring every pieces together. My body is a fucking puzzle I have to rebuild every morning.

That means I have to live my days with the fear of seeing this fragile and delicate puzzle being smashed up by the outside world. This is the difference between you and me : since you don’t have to fix your body every morning, it doesn’t even occur to you that is could break right in the middle of the street for no reason except that the wind was a bit strong today. And when I say break, I insist, I don’t mean broken bones. I mean being like a dandelion. When I was child, I loved those flowers, it was so beautiful so blow on them and watch the seeds fly. My mother told me that if you could catch one of the seeds after blowing on it, you could make a wish.

My body is a dandelion. Except that there is no wish to make. When you blow on a dandelion, if you can catch one or two seeds, you’re lucky. You never know where the seeds go. Can you imagine trying to catch all of the dandelion’s seeds ? Me neither. But sometimes, I have to look for the pieces of my body to fix it when the wind has blowed on me. Can you imagine the agony, the painful panic of knowing that you will never be able to catch all the seeds, leading you to abandon some pieces of your own body in the world, knowing that you’ll have to rebuild it from scratch ? Well, if you can, you’re not even close to what it’s really like (but thank you for trying to imagine, you’re great). Because I have to live with the knowledge that I can’t protect us, body and mind, properly, I will always lose pieces in the wind, no matter what. You guessed right : more guilt to carry and live with. Because when you don’t have boundary : enough is never enough.

Now, try to imagine what it means to me to touch or being touched with this dandelion body. I used to say I don’t like being touched or touch, but I realised it’s a bit more complicated than that (I know : what a surprise !). In France, to say hello to friends, relatives, close ones, you kiss on the cheeks. I. Fucking. Hate. This. I hate “having” to touch someone. I hate having to kiss strangers. I hate when I have to let people I don’t like kiss me. I’m terrible at this. I can’t lie, but my body is even a worse liar than I am. Really ! If you care and watch closely, I have the most readable body language of the world. (that’s why I suck at poker : I don’t get the point of a game where all you do is lie to other for money)(well that sounds like a good summary of life too... does it mean I suck at life too ???) I don’t like you ? I will not make a move to you, find a way to be as far of you as I can, and if we have to cheek-kiss, well, you’ll do all the job because I want even move my head (and if I really really hate you, you can see my whole body contracting itself and my fist getting ready to punch). If we’re ok, I’ll try, and smile, but still contracting (don’t fly away dandelion body...). If I like you, I will still try to avoid if not in the mood, but won’t contract if we touch. If we’re really friend or I love you, I will make the move to touch you (probably in a more or less awkward way but I will !).

All this because of the Dandelion effect : touch you could kill me. Or at least a part of me. Touch you could break a part of the dandelion for ever. And it’s not even the worst. I told you my body has no boundary and it can sometimes be hard for me to feel its outlines. When I touch someone, these outlines get even more blurry. Where does my body stop ? Where the othere’s start ? It’s terrifying. It’s a fucking vertigo. And when I have to touch someone I don’t like / hate... it’s hell. It feels like I could be swallowed by the other. I can’t defend my boundaries because I don’t know where they fucking are. So I feel under attack, and there is nothing I can do to defend myself. Nothing. At all. Except avoiding being touched.

On the contrary.... on December, I saw a friend, a very touchy friend. And she knows I don’t like being touched and it took her time to accept not cheek-kissing me. But we didn’t see each other for months. I really missed and was fucking happy to meet her again. While waiting for her, I was debating with myself that I would like to touch her (I trust you all to be clever and open-minded people who will perfectly undersantd after this reading that when I say “I want to touch someone” it’s not always about sexual stuffs). And she arrived “I know you don’t like that, but I haven’t seen you in months, can we hug ?” I was overjoyed she asked me before.... which leads me to be overjoyed to hug her, and hours later when we left, to ask for another hug to say goodbye. And I loved and am still treasuring those two hugs.

I love hug, and kiss, and touch and being touched, if I feel safe with the person, if I feel the other can understand I don’t want to be touched in any ways. If I feel like I’m forced to (just like with social convention of cheek-kiss in France) I will hate it, feel under attack, in danger, and that I might die / disappear / suffer in the process, just because the person in front of me thinks “well it’s just a kiss and there’s only me, don’t be lazy !”. I’m not lazy, I’m terrified. You will not be there to look for all the seeds of the dandelion. I will. Alone. And I won’t be able to find back all the seeds. I will lose parts of me again. Just because you wanted to be cheek-kissed by me. And this is the kind of behaviour that leads to me cursing all of you during insoomnia, the kind of behaviour that leaves me crying at night over the lost pieces, fucking alone. Always alone.

You may think it’s not so hard to avoid those situations, but, unfortunately, you’re wrong. For exemples, I hate massages. It makes me feel like I’m going to break, to explode from the inside. Body reacts by contracting even more. Massages are painful. Massages are hell. ut have you tried to explain this to your love one who just wanted to release you from a terrible neck pain ? Good luck with that. In the outside world, massage = good. So when you can’t help but having your body reacting to a message by contracting and half-screaming half-spitting “stop this go to hell stop pain !”... well it’s not the proper answer. He would stop... but try again the next day. I said it was very nice of him and I appreciate the gesture and the fact he wantd to take care. But please, don’t. It’s painful. “of course it is ! you should relax and you contract every muscles !” Like if I had a choice. I don’t control this part of me. Body feels in danger ? Body protects itself.

You know what I like ? People having their hands on my shoulders. Not moving nor massaging. Just being here. I love the warmth of it. The peaceful feeling. The not being alone feling. The outline of my body unblurrying. I love to feel that someone is there. In a way, it makes it up to all the alone night crying over dead dandelion body.

I never dared to ask ex-boyfriend. Or the guys I kinda dated since. Because to the world it’s like “nothing”. Just holding someone feels like nothing. You have to do something.

I guess the world hasn’t spent enough nights crying over a dead dandelion body, caring the guilt of lost seeds, feeling terribly alone, and scared of the next day where you will have to fix the body puzzle, alone, once again.

[insidethecrack]

On blood and evil

It’s been a long time since I last wrote here... Sorry, a lot has happened.

The thing is, four days ago, I got 2 new tattoos (yeah !), and as always, getting ink under my skin brings back some unexpected stuffs. 

This two new babies are on my arms, one on each arm. They are my 4th and 5th tattoos but it was the first time I could watch the process. I really enjoyed it, and realised I was kinda frustrated to have missed that the other times. Except for one little moment. 

The skin on the arm is somehow more fragile. But in the same time, tha tatoo artist told me my skin was very resistant and he has to insist for the ink to penetrate into it. And so, here it happened : there was blood. It can happen when you get tattooed, it’s not a big deal. Well, it’s not supposed to be. It was very tiny and small, like a cat scratch. But I got terrified anyway. 

There’s a problem with my blood. 

Not a problem like a problem in the Real World. 

It’s a problem in the Madness World. One that I can’t control at all. 

I’ve self-harmed for years.The first time, it was just “to finally sleep”. Don’t ask me how a 15 years old girl comes to the conclusion that inflicting pain to her body would lead us to dreamland, because I have no idea. Thing is she was right : she slept. So when the next insomnia stroke, it was hard to resist. And insomnia wouldn’t be the only problem.

I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but I got convinced that there was something bad about me. And don’t get me wrong : bad is not strong enough. There’s no word strong enough in any language to describe this. There is a problem in my blood, something bad, rotten, evil. All the meaningness about me, all the shit I am was in the blood. So the voices convinced me that if we cut deep enough, if we bleed enough, if we hurt enough, we could get rid of it. I often have the image that I’m rotting, decaying, and I can feel the worms in my blood. My blood is like the formula of pure evil / rot / bad. My blood is what makes me the monster I am.

I fought Evelyn, my Madness, for years. I’m 7 years-old clean from self-harm. I’ve fought hard enough to stop hurting me. But the belief, this feeling that my blood is filled with rot and worms and pure evil is still here, still strong. It just has changed form. Before, it was a burning constant feeling, now, it’s a sleeping monster, waiting for the right time to bite and eat you and destroy everything it can find. Lately, this sleeping monster was very often tempted to get out, and I experienced this feeling of boiling blood, ready to explode and burn anything it tuches.

Because that’s the thing : my blood is such a concentration of pure evil and rot and worms and bad, that if you touch it, you’ll be like me, destroyed and eaten by evil and rot and worms and bad and it will be my fault. This is one of the reason I don’t ike being touched, ‘cause I could give you this “disease”, the disease of me... And it’s particularly true with my blood.

I never have sex when I have my periods I never give my blood for a long time I didn’t even allow people to touch my scars

And I know, the lucid part of my brain knows for sure that there is nothing wrong with my blood. Because of my insomnia my doctor often asks for blood analysis : there is nothing, not a single disease, not a lack of vitamin, no infection or any shit. But still.... the feeling of pure evil travelling silently in my blood stays.

So when I saw the blood on my arms because of the ink, I was terrified that the tattoo artist might catch these shits in my blood. And I’m proud of me. You know why ? ‘cause I fought the panick attack, I managed to keep breathing, I repeated myself that he had gloves, even if Evelyn was repeating that such a pure concentration of evil would go through the gloves, until I was able to ask him to clean my arms before going on. 

And he’s not sick.

And the art is great and I’m really happy with my new arms. 

It seems like nothing... because there wasn’t much blood, and nothing could really happen, and he had gloves and all. But it is real to me. I live with pure evil and rot and worms in my blood. And I’m fighting it. First round was to convince me that empty my body of my own blood wouldn’t solve anything, the evil would still be here. It’s a huge thing. I guess you can’t ask me to feel ok with my blood right after this... I’m trying to remember it. 

The little victories...

Maybe one day, I’ll be able to live with my body without waging war on it everyday. Maybe we can do it together. In the meantime, I’ll just keep singing lullaby to the evil in my blood, so the worms stay asleep and I can move on with my life...

It might destroy me, but I’d sacrifice my ody, if it meant I get the Jack part out...